House of Cards
by redseeker
Summary: Seto Kaiba finds himself trapped in a nightmarish world of illusion, where his only hope for survival - and escape - is his one-time enermy, Maximillion Pegasus.
1. Prologue

_Collapsing like houses of cards  
And landing on splinters and glass..._

Zeromancer - 'Houses of Cards'

"Welcome, Kaiba, to a world of your imagination."

Seto wheeled around, gun clutched tightly in his hand. "Where are you, you snake?" he demanded, eyes narrowing as he glared into the shadows. His question was met with glittering laughter, seeming to echo all around him at once. His eyes darted to and fro, and he gripped the weapon with both hands so that his knuckles turned white. Straight ahead, he thought he saw something move, a blurry shade of a silhouette and ribbon-like hair. He raised his gun and fired. The shot cracked with startling volume but the bullet was swallowed by the darkness. "Unfortunately for you," the all-too-familiar voice returned. Seto grit his teeth. "I also have some degree of control in this place."

Seto felt a warm wind ripple over him, and at once the gun that had been such a reassuring presence in his hands was gone and he was left clutching at empty air. Another laugh, the echo of a soft touch at his cheek, and then the darkness exploded into a symphony of black, white, and red. He was falling backwards, and that same laughter filled his ears as he descended, helpless and silent, amid a flurry of cards.

---


	2. One: Welcome to Toon World

_Back off, I'll take you on,  
Headstrong to take on anyone..._

Trapt - 'Headstrong'

"Yo! Kaiba!"

Seto froze at the sound of that gratingly familiar voice; that certain drawl that could belong to only one person. Reluctantly, he turned. "Wheeler," he said, giving the smirking blond only a cursory glance before directing his eyes to Joey's left, and down. Of course, Yugi stood smiling at Wheeler's side, thumbs latched into the straps of his backpack. He offered the diminutive champion a cursory nod; he considered himself fully entitled to ignore Wheeler, but obligated to at least acknowledge Yugi's presence. He was one of the few people that actually garnered Kaiba's respect, however grudgingly bestowed.

Yugi seemed to take this acknowledgement to heart, and returned it with a rosy grin. "Hey Kaiba," he said. Seto felt himself tense up involuntarily as the pair of them fell in step with him, one on either side, as they ascended the mammoth stone staircase. Whereas Yugi was, as always, all sunshine and friendliness, the atmosphere radiating from Wheeler was significantly cooler. "You're here for the tournament?"

Choosing for the moment to ignore the inanity of the question, Kaiba only nodded once more, replying, "I don't know about you, but I want to find out just what the old coot has up his sleeve this time."

Yugi laughed. "Now, I don't know. I think Pegasus is okay these days. He did help us out with that whole Anubis thing." Seto raised an eyebrow. "Well okay, he helped me out. But still."

On the other side of him, Joey chuckled; Seto cast him a cautious sidelong look. The blond hand one hand in his shaggy hair and was shaking his head at Yugi with a smile. "Yuug, if there's one thing I've learned from hangin' out with you is that any tournament you enter is gonna end up with some big bad lunatic wreakin' havoc."

Despite himself, Kaiba found himself snickering. Yugi frowned deeply. "No really, you guys. Trust me, this is going to be just a bit of fun."

"And the prize?" Seto asked. Yugi looked momentarily baffled, before saying, apparently in earnest, "It's not the winning that matters, Kaiba. It's the taking part."

Seto paused and almost tripped as he attempted to digest the lump of trite that Yugi had just spouted so sincerely. He coughed.

"You okay, Moneybags?" Wheeler laughed. Seto aimed one of his icier glares at him, before transmuting it into a well-practiced sneer. Gathering his wits once more he was able to fire a reassuringly snide comment in the blond's direction, "I guess that explains why you're here, right Wheeler?"

True to form, Joey's cheeks coloured and his features twisted into the expression of extreme irritation that Seto always found so comic. "Hey! Just what're you tryin' to say?"

"I'm not _trying _to say anything," Seto said, with a satisfying note of condescension, "I'm saying that it's a good thing winning doesn't matter, because obviously this would be a wasted trip for you otherwise."

He tried to stifle a laugh when Wheeler actually growled, _growled_, at him in reply, and moved as if to attack him. Yugi, eyes wide with genuine worry, made an effort to hold the blond back. Kaiba cocked his head to one side, smirking. This kid practically asks to be mocked, he thought. "Careful, Yugi," he said. "Looks like your pet needs a muzzle."

"Why, you-!" Joey seemed speechless with rage for a moment, and Yugi implored Kaiba with his eyes.

"Joey, calm down. Kaiba didn't mean it… You might get kicked out if you start a fight…"

"That reminds me," Seto went on, mind wandering. "Where's the fan club?"

"What?" Yugi asked, after managing to partially calm the still seething blond. "Oh, you mean my friends."

"If that's what you want to call them."

"Well, strictly speaking only contestants and staff are allowed on the island."

"That didn't stop the dweebs tagging along last time," Seto commented. They had just mounted the final step, and the vast door swung open before them; no messing about with star chips, this time the whole tournament was taking place within the castle walls. Seto glanced up at the overcast sky and silently applauded Pegasus on his forward planning. "Ever tried duelling without your band of cheerleaders? Bet it's going to be hard for you." Yugi eyed him reproachfully as they stepped over the threshold and into the entrance hall; Joey shuffled after them, arms folded, muttering. "It'll be worse for the mutt, of course."

To his surprise, he heard Yugi sigh. "Why are you always like this?" he said.

Seto looked down at him, caught off guard. However, before he could formulate a reply, the doors clanged shut behind them and the milling crowd of fellow duellists turned their collective attention to the large speakers arranged around the room's high ceiling, from which the voice of Maximillion Pegasus now boomed.

"Welcome, duellists," it cooed. There was a faint hiss and crackle underlying his words, which Seto decided was evidence that the message had been pre-recorded – and shoddily so. Beside him, Yugi was staring up at the room's corners just like every other duellist in the room. Kaiba rolled his eyes then, suspicious as he always was of Pegasus, glanced about the room's few exits.

"Where are you?" he muttered. At his side, Yugi made a noise of puzzlement. Taking it as a cue to explain his uneasiness, Kaiba elaborated, "Pegasus. Why the recording? This is the opening of his big comeback tournament. He should be here in person."

Yugi frowned, and then, slowly, nodded. "You're right…. It is a little strange."

"What's strange? Ya mean Kaiba's fashion sense? 'Cause I gotta agree with you there," Joey interrupted, strolling up behind them. Seto grit his teeth in irritation.

"…To the second Duellist Kingdom Tournament," Pegasus went on. Kaiba huffed. That's original, he thought.

"No, you moron," he replied, words slow and carefully modulated. "We were talking about-"

"This is a world where nothing is as it seems," Pegasus' voice continued. "Where dreams and reality merge, and where deadly pitfalls await the unwary."

"About what, you big jerk? What's your problem anyway?" Joey jabbed Seto in the chest, a foolish invitation to fight.

"This is no ordinary Duel Monsters Tournament. Wander this castle at your will, but be prepared. This particular rabbit hole goes deeper than you might imagine." Pegasus' voice was suddenly cut off with a fizz and a clunk, and replaced by a quiet, high-pitched hissing sound.

"My only problem is standing right in front of me," Seto snarled.

"…Uh…guys?"

"What?" both Joey and Seto snapped in unison, both shooting venomous looks in the smaller boy's direction. Shaken for only an instant, Yugi pointed to the ceiling behind Kaiba and said, "What's that?"

"What?" Kaiba twisted around to see, glanced up, and gave a startled half gasp when he saw the grey smoke spilling from grates near the ceiling. "Shit…! Pegasus, you…ah!" The gas billowed over the crowd of duellists, now panicking and scratching like rats at the door, which was shut as fast as ever. His throat becoming sore, Kaiba dropped to his knees as his head began to spin. Glancing up he saw, in a haze, Yugi and Joey drop to the floor also. Yugi looked up at him, big eyes hazy, before falling face first onto the floor, unconscious. Seconds later, Seto followed suit.

---


	3. Two: White Light

_Let's play the game  
I'm sure you all know how  
But watch yourselves, my foolish friends  
You're all in my world now…_

'Face Up, Face Down'

When Seto opened his eyes he was met with clamouring bright light and the sting of water. The light played and swam before him, blinding white, and a red blur, feet above. Bewildered and immobile, enveloped in wet warmth, he let the experience wash over him, too dazed to try to make sense of it. He narrowed his eyes, attempting in vain to see clearly, and then blinked. His eyelids too heavy, he felt himself slipping under again.

---

"You have a lot of enemies," murmured the long haired man, studying his array of monitors closely. "Yet somehow you have managed to slip through each of their fingers. But worry not…" He tapped a couple of keys. "I have studied them all very closely, and have learned from their mistakes." He began to smile. "I will succeed where they have failed."

---

A swimming blur of colours, blindingly bright, assaulted his eyes, and Seto squeezed them shut just as quickly as he had opened them. His ears still hissed, but as the dizziness subsided he was able to make out, peering through his colours of a room he vaguely recognised. When he again tried to open his eyes fully the brightness of the room was not quite so unbearable, and after several seconds of blinking he was able to see more or less normally. He found himself staring up at the ceiling of the entrance hall, just where he had fallen. He could remember what had happened clearly, yet that did little to help him understand it. Sitting up with a groan he gingerly supported his head with his hand, and looked around the hall. To his surprise, he was its sole occupant.

"…Yugi?" he tried, not truly expecting an answer. Met with silence, he rested his elbows on his knees, waiting to feel strong enough to stand. "Well, this is new," he muttered. A moment later and he was on his feet, only swaying slightly. "Pegasus!" he yelled, wincing at the effect the volume had on his fragile head. "What the hell's going on here?" Again there was no reply, and he sighed. His eye caught one of the speakers and he gave a mirthless laugh. "No ordinary tournament, huh?" he said. "Another one of your stupid games. Well, I've beaten you before."

Glancing about the hall again he decided upon an exit at random and set out, his steps becoming surer with every stride, until he walked, quite literally, into Joey Wheeler.

"Whoa, hey, watch it Moneybags!" Joey exclaimed, trying and failing to save himself falling inelegantly to the ground.

Seto growled, and foughtto remain dignified. "Wheeler."

Joey rose to his feet, dusting himself off and shaking his lank hair back into its usual dishevelled style. "Right," he said, shooting Kaiba another resentful glare.

Seto folded his arms and sighed irritably. "What are you doing here?"

"Thought we covered that one," the blond snapped. "Remember? Tournament, prize, you insulted me… jeez, you were there."

Seto rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean." He glanced down the hallway, back the way he had come. "Where is everyone?"

Joey shoved his hands into his pockets and sniffed, "Beats me." He strolled to Kaiba's side, and followed his gaze until Seto noticed and looked inquiringly down at him. Joey laughed, scratched the back of his head, and proceeded to rummage in his jacket pocket for something. Seto watched him.

"You're not worried?" he asked.

"Who, me?" Joey replied, pausing and pointing to himself. "Nah, o' course not. Sure, it's weird, but… Aha!" He withdrew a packet of cigarettes, slid one out, and placed it between his lips. With a crooked smile he offered the pack to Kaiba, who declined with a sneer. Joey shrugged and, procuring a lighter from somewhere about his person, lit up.

"Since when do you smoke?" Seto asked, wafting a hand before his face to dispel the smoke and suppressing a cough.

Joey shrugged. "A while. 'Sides, who are you to be sayin' stuff like that. What are ya, worried about my health?"

Seto raised his eyebrows. "Please." He began to pace absently, glancing about the corridor. "You needn't worry about me passing judgement on you. I've already done that."

Joey shrugged again, leaning back against the smoothly plastered wall. "Whatever."

A long pause, then, "Do you know how this tournament's meant to work? I don't see any arenas, and we don't have duel disks…"

Joey took a long, lazy drag on his cigarette before replying, with trademark nonchalance, "Guess you're right there." At Kaiba's cold gaze he seemed to feel obligated to continue. "Maybe I'm supposed to challenge you," he suggested.

Seto gave an involuntary snort of laughter. "It's supposed to be a _challenge_, Wheeler. Duelling you would be far too easy to even bother with."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Duelling monkey, blah blah."

"Actually I was going more with Chihuahua, but monkey is fine," Seto replied sweetly. Joey shot him an acid look, but Kaiba merely shrugged. "Oh, get a grip. What did you expect, an apology?" Wheeler gave an indignant "Huh" and looked away, frowning. "Stupid mutt," Seto added under his breath, rapidly growing bored of the conversation. "I'm going to go find someone worth challenging," he said scornfully, then as an afterthought, "Where's Yugi?"

Wheeler seemed significantly less talkative than he had minutes earlier; he only gave a surly half shrug and said, "I dunno." Kaiba moved to turn away, but stopped when the blond called after him. "Try headin' upstairs. Seems to me that's where he'd go. The old arena an' all." Seto looked at him in barely concealed amazement. "What?" Joey said, fidgeting.

"Nothing," Seto replied with a laugh. "It's just that… that's probably the most intelligent thing I've heard you say."

---

Even in the darkest shadows of night, some say, will shine the light of madness. As such, in this particular darkness this light chose to manifest itself in musical form, and the quiet yet startling cheerfulness of the tune lent a certain calm to the ominous blackness of the dungeon.

"Face up, face down," the voice sang with vacant, upbeat rhythm, the lyrics half slurred, "stay on guard…" A sigh, followed by a churlish "Humph." The dungeon's sole inhabitant stared critically into the maze of shadowed corners, still tapping out a rhythm on the floor with one nail. "It's shoddy, is what it is," he said absently. "Not even a single guard. A man could get insulted, you know!" He raised his voice at this last comment, but nothing but dull echoes answered. "Face up, face down…" he resumed, apparent good humour defying his current situation, "Play your strongest card…"

---


	4. Three: Circles

_Oh to live  
In your own world,  
Where it doesn't even matter  
If you're young or old.  
Who said the truth was in the bottle  
By the side of the bed  
With the "Drink Me" label?_

Alisha's Attic - 'Shameless'

Twenty minutes after his encounter with Joey, Seto Kaiba was starting to feel just a little bit frustrated

"This is ridiculous!" he growled, coming to a halt at a junction he had passed through countless times already. The pastel walls and plush carpets grated at his nerves with their cheerful colours, the portraits hanging on said walls seeming to mock him with their blithe smiles. On his right was the same blonde woman that haunted the walls of the whole castle, beneath her, on the frame, was inscribed the name: Cecilia. He spared her a cursory, vaguely hostile glance before turning his back on her.

With clenched fists he surveyed his options once again. Blank hallways stretched off to his left and right, with a third corridor extending in front of him, the walls broken at intervals with dark wooden doors. He had arrived here before, and tried each of the three ways time and again, yet each time he found his way either back to this very spot, or to the entrance hall. The latter was now completely empty, Wheeler having disappeared, presumably to find someone of his own level to duel with. What Seto found most unnerving was that he had yet to meet another duellist wandering the castle. Not that Seto Kaiba ever got unnerved, as he would hasten to add. He just thought that it was strange. "Some tournament," he muttered. "Looks like I win, by default of being the only one here."

A soft laugh behind him made him flinch, before quickly turning, trying to cover the fact that he had been surprised. Narrowing his eyes he searched the hall for whoever had been spying on him, but found himself just as alone as before.

"Who…?"

"Over here," said the voice, followed by a sugary giggle. An unexpected movement drew his eyes to the painting ahead of him. His head and that of the blonde woman's were at roughly the same level, and Seto realised with a start that she was smiling. As he stared at her, her smile widened into a catlike grin, and from those pearly pink lips emanated the same musical voice. "You silly," she cooed, waggling her slim fingers at him in a girlish wave.

It only took Seto a moment to recover from his shock and gain proper hold of his senses. So a painting was talking to him. Hadn't he eexperienced stranger things before? Still… he looked at her closely; for a hologram she was quite impressive. He could even see the delicate brushstrokes covering her skin and dress.

The woman in the painting leaned forward, showing off plump cleavage, tendrils of pale hair tumbling forward over her shoulders. "Good morning, Mr. Kaiba," she said, blue eyes twinkling.

Seto frowned in reply. "It's afternoon," he said.

Her eyes widened in feigned shock, and she brought a hand to her mouth. "Is it? Goodness! …Ha, not that it matters. There's no time here."

"No duellists either," Seto commented.

"I'm not so sure about that," the woman pouted, her hand moving to comb absently through her hair. "You're here, aren't you?" When he didn't reply she went on, "But yes, I suppose it takes two to tango, as they say." She gave a small sigh. "It's too bad my dear Maximillion can't be here; he would have so loved to duel you again, I know it."

"Why can't h-"

"Do you know who I am?" she interrupted, gazing inquiringly at him and twirling her hair around her index finger.

Kaiba snorted. "Of course I do." He hadn't at first, but a smart boy like him was able to put two and two together. "You're his wife, right?" He paused to sneer slightly. "Beyond tasteless, installing a hologram of his dead wife to haunt passing duellists."

She gave him another winning smile. "And what makes you think I'm not real?"  
Seto merely shot her a cynical, disapproving glance. "Whatever," he said. "…Pegasus always _was _mad."

"Now!" Cecilia held up one dainty finger to admonish him. "That is my husband you're talking about! Besides…" She relaxed, girlish grin slipping back into place. "We're all mad here."

"Oh, don't look so shocked," Cecilia cooed when she saw Seto's expression. "You didn't know? No one's told you? I'll tell you another secret." And she beckoned with one finger for him to move closer. Kaiba, unaware that his afternoon could get any stranger, cautiously complied, leaning close to the portrait. He felt a cold clanging shock when, as she also leaned towards him, the tips of her fingers actually touched the shell of his ear, and he felt her warm breath on his skin as she prepared to whisper her "secret". He glanced her way, eyes widening when he saw her upper body extending out of her picture's frame. "I'm mad too, you know," she said, with the air of one divulging some scandalous chunk of little-known information.

Seto, despite himself, found himself laughing. "I believe you."

Cecilia leaned back, her hands resting on the lower ledge of her frame, and laughed. She was smiling. "I'm mad. You're mad."

Seto shook his head. "You're wrong," he said. "I'm the only sane one here." Now it was Cecilia's turn to shake her head, and she made a kind of motherly tutting noise.

"Oh, Seto, dear," she said fondly. "You'll soon find out how much you truly belong here."

Kaiba bristled at being called "dear", but let it slide. "So which way do you think I should go?" he said, wanting to change the subject.

"I'm sorry," she said, holding one hand to her ear. "Was that…? I think it was! Seto Kaiba asking for help?"

Kaiba frowned. "I wasn't asking for your help."

"Oh, but you were."

"No, I wasn't," Seto stressed through gritted teeth. "I was just-"

"Well, I shouldn't think it matters awfully."

"…What?"

"Which way you go," Cecilia said. She put one hand on her waist, and the other she twirled in an abstract manner as she continued to speak, "All these paths… they all lead somewhere. The question is: where do you want to go? You don't know, do you?"

"Actually-"

"Maybe they all lead to the same place?"

Seto clenched his fists. "So far they all lead here," he remarked.

"You'd get along swimmingly with _them_…" Cecilia said idly, now inspecting her immaculately painted nails.

"Who?" Seto shot. She glanced up at him with wide eyes before pointing with one lazy finger along the corridor to his left.

"Down there, the door at the end. They came by some time ago. Lovely boys. A little, you know…" and she pointed one finger at the side of her head and twirled it in a loose circle.

"Mad?" Seto pre-empted, one eyebrow raised.

She grinned at him. "Completely loony."


	5. Four: High Tea

_I saw the devil again  
Gave me deliverance  
I saw my angel and then  
I couldn't tell the difference..._

Kidneythieves - 'Trickster'

Castles really were perfect places to get lost in.

This was what Pegasus thought as he skidded around another corner, stone floor made slippery with damp, somehow propelling himself through a dark yet inviting door. He managed to swing the door closed behind him, and it shut with a loud bang. He paused only a second, clutching his chest and breathing hard, before scrabbling around in the dark looking for a lock of some kind. His fingers found an oversized iron bolt, and with a desperate sigh of relief he shoved it home just in time to feel the whole door shake under the impact of one of his pursuers crashing into it. He jumped back as the pair of them began to pound on the other side of the door, his eye wide and his balance shaky. Then, pulling himself out of his rabbit-like daze, he turned and stumbled deeper into the pitch-black corridor.

This passage was even narrower than the labyrinth that had come before, and the walls, as he trailed his fingers over them, were slick and uneven, with cobwebbed cracks between the stones. After a little while his sight adjusted to the darkness and he was able to increase his pace. The thumping behind him had stopped, which made him uneasy; it either meant that they had moved on in an attempt to head him off, or that they were trying to trick him into doubling back. He chewed the inside of his lower lip as he struggled with deciding what to do. After a while he shrugged and, deciding that since he was already heading in this direction, he may as well continue.

"My own fault, of course," he muttered, seeing the funny side despite his predicament. "I criticise him for being slipshod, so naturally he sends in the heavies just as I'm staging my grand escape."

He raised his head and squinted into the darkness. If he could find his way up into the castle proper, and out of these dungeons, he would be fine. Well… mostly fine.

…Probably.

---

A familiar door loomed up before him, and Seto paused to wince at the gaudy extravagance of the great, gilt winged horse that adorned it. It was familiar, yes, but not where he had expected it. He was certain that the last time he had rounded this corner he had been met with another corridor, ending with steps leading back into the entrance hall.

Giving a half shrug, he grasped the cold handles and pulled. The room beyond was dim, yet seemed to sparkle with a festive gold light, which he soon discovered was the work of hundreds of dribbling candles stuck onto every surface, their light bouncing carelessly off silver dishes and the crystals of the large, unlit chandelier.

However, the room was far from uninhabited. In the centre of the room stood a long table, dressed in a gleaming white cloth and set with a number of places. At one of these sat a boy, dressed in black, with white hair that fell down his back in long, strange spikes. Perched atop the table, opposite him, was another boy Seto recognised; this one with richly tanned skin and golden hair, and eyes such a distinctive shade of violet that to see them glinting out of that shadowed room sent a chill through him.

Both their eyes turned his way as he entered; Malik made a small noise of surprise, but Bakura only smiled a slow, serpentine smile. "Why look," he said, deep voice laced with an edge of menace. "We have a guest."

Seto's expression darkened. "You two."

Malik suddenly let out a glittering laugh. "Us two," he said, tucking a stray strand of hair behind his ear. He was also clad all in black, but unlike Bakura, who wore an oddly anachronistic costume of black tailcoat and crisp, bloodstained linens, the blond had on a variation of his favoured combats and short top. His gold jewellery shone in the dancing light.

"I'm afraid there's no room," Bakura said, picking up a dusty top hat from beside his plate and placing it upon his head.

"No room at all," Malik parroted.

Seto folded his arms and wandered a few paces into the opulent dining room, glancing at the abundance of unused place settings surrounding the shining dishes and scattered crumbs. "No room?"

Bakura leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs and staring at Seto in a critical manner. Seto felt his skin crawl, and suddenly felt too close to these two for comfort, despite the width of the table between him and them.

He grit his teeth. "All right then. If you're afraid to duel me, I'll just be on my way…" He moved to turn away, frustrated and not bothering to think that he had no idea where he would go, or how to get there. Before he had taken one step he heard furtive whispering behind him, and then Malik's voice, "No, you can't leave."

"What?" Seto replied, turning back, momentarily bewildered. "I don't have time for games."

"You're wrong," Bakura answered. With one bony hand he pulled his hat further down over his eyes. "You have time only for games."

"So stay and play with us," Malik joined in, reclining on his hands, lounging across the pristine tablecloth. His eyes glittered, and he gave a wicked little laugh. "Have some tea." He thrust an overfilled cup toward Seto, who pushed it away, the brown liquid slopping into the saucer. "Fine," Malik huffed, with a haughty pout. "Suit yourself." He threw the cup over his shoulder, and it landed on the flags with a sharp crash, a spray of scalding hot tea fanning through the air behind it. "More for us."

Bakura chuckled, and pulled a large tureen toward him.

"What are you two doing here?" Seto asked. "You're really in the tournament?" He couldn't disguise the derision with which he uttered the second question.

"So many questions," Bakura muttered; Malik looked lazily at him over his shoulder. The white haired boy lifted the cover of the dish and retrieved something brown and wriggling. "Here's one for you." He raised the thing to his mouth, and Seto recognised it as some kind of small rodent; he moved forward, hand raised, but before he could do anything the fiend had bitten into the animal's neck, tearing its head from its small, convulsing body. Seto exclaimed in revulsion, but Bakura simply regarded him with a flat stare as he casually crunched the creature's skull, as though he were eating bread and butter. Then, his mouth still half full and with hot blood spilling from his lips, he said, "Do you like riddles?"

Seto, feeling his disgust mingle with anger, responded, "No, I don't. My turn." Bakura raised his eyebrows. Meanwhile, Malik had begun to pour himself another cup of tea. He poured a small amount from the pot then, as if suddenly bored, topped it up with whisky procured from under the table. "How long have you been here?"

Bakura gulped down his mouthful and discarded the little body that was almost bled dry, laughing, "I don't know." Seto glanced over his head to the clock on the wall. Bakura followed his gaze. "That? It's broken. It's read the same time every time I've looked. But why the hurry?" And he fixed Seto with a dark, predatory stare, slightly arching one eyebrow. "You don't have anywhere else you have to be."

Seto frowned, then reached into his coat's inside pocket and brought out his deck. Slamming it down on the table in front of him, he looked the thief in the eye and said, "Duel me."

Bakura's eyes widened, and then he laughed, wiping a smear of blood from his chin with one white-gloved hand. Malik eyed Seto's cards with interest, and crawled across the table to swat Kaiba's hand out of the way. "Hey, what are you…?" Seto began, but was interrupted as the blond, having lifted the top card from the pack, exclaimed, "Blue Eyes! Well, aren't we onto a winning streak?"

Bakura chuckled, leaning forward and resting his hands on his knees. "All right." He beckoned to Malik, who adopted a curious expression and shuffled back his way. Bakura caressed his cheek in a strangely gentle gesture, ran his long fingers through Malik's hair, before, with a peculiar flourish, drawing one slim piece of card from behind the tomb-keeper's ear. He raised one eyebrow at Seto.

"What?" Kaiba said coldly. "You expect me to be impressed by cheap magic tricks?"

"Oh yes, I forgot," Bakura said. "You don't believe in magic, do you? Well, let's just see what you make of this." Holding the card with his first and second fingers, he twirled it around so that Seto could see its face. However, it was not a monster Kaiba recognised.

"What the-?" he began, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward to see better. Before he could, the card became a block of solid gold light, and out of it rose a shadowy manifestation of the creature printed upon it; half humanoid, it resembled Obelisk, yet its lower half was transmuted into the form of a great snake creature, its venomous fangs poised alarmingly close to Seto's face. Before Kaiba could react, the monster had employed unexpected speed and wrapped its snakelike lower body around Seto's torso, pinning his arms to his sides and applying stifling pressure.

"Your turn," Bakura said softly. Straining against the spectral coils that held him bound, Seto tried to reply, but found he did not have the breath. Malik, on all fours on the tabletop, reached a hand up to grab the lapel of Seto's coat, and drew him down. Seto lost his balance, but found himself held by Bakura's creature. Malik, smiling, brought his face close to Seto's and murmured, "Do you concede?"


	6. Five: Killing Time

_I'm time, not kind nor cruel  
Perceive me as so many do  
You blame me for you  
I can't hear the truth  
In my head, she said  
It's dark and twisting..._

Full Blown Kirk - 'Horehound'

"Where is he now?" The question was almost barked, the words clipped and commanding. His subordinates jumped and frantically tapped at their keyboards, scanning various flickering screens. "Well?"

"Uh," one of them began, voice shaking. "Mr. von Shröder, sir… we… ahh…"

Siegfried pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, anticipating with gritted teeth the boy's next words. "You have lost him, haven't you?" he said slowly. His employees regarded him with visible apprehension, but he only took a deep breath, counted silently to five, and breathed out slowly. He flicked his long hair over one shoulder and said, "How is this possible, pray tell? You! What is your name?"

"Uhh, D-Die-"

"Don't stammer!"

"Dieter, sir!" the teen near shouted. He had not worked for SchröderCorp very long; this was his first job for the company.

"Very well, Dieter. Can you tell me how it is that we have lost our "guest"? Especially when we are supposed to have cameras mounted in every hallway?" To give the guy some credit, he was trying very hard not to yell at the lad.

"I don't know sir…b-but… it's like he's just disappeared."

In the corner of the room a small figure shifted, stepped away from the wall. It was a boy with brown hair and soft amber eyes, his hands in his pockets.

"What does it matter?" he asked quietly.

Siegfried turned to his brother and shot him a critical look. "What do you mean?"

The boy shrugged. "What's he going to do? The guy's half senile, technologically challenged, and hardly likely to pose a threat."

Siegfried narrowed his eyes. "If there is one thing I have learned from all of this, Leon, it's to never underestimate my enemies."

Leon sighed. "Whatever."

Dieter shuffled hurriedly through some papers, typed something into his machine, then flicked through various screens with ridiculous speed, his face a mask of avid concentration.

"Well?"

Dieter didn't reply for a moment, only squinted at his array of monitors, biting his lip. "…Ah!" he exclaimed, expression morphing into a look of triumph. "There!"

Siegfried's features rearranged themselves into a serpentine smile. "There, was that so hard?" he said softly, watching the pale haired figure on the screen. "How rude of him; I think we need to teach him some manners. Really… does no one take notice of good etiquette these days?" Unseen behind him, Leon rolled his eyes.

"You want us to send someone to pick him up?" another subordinate asked, hand hovering over an intercom console.

Siegfried hesitated a moment. "No…" he said at length.

"No?" All eyes turned to him, widened in disbelief.

Siegfried tilted his head up, looking at the ceiling for a moment before giving his brother a mischievous look. "This could turn out better than even I planned."

"Well? Do you?" Malik whispered. Seto twisted within the monster's coils, but didn't reply. "Oh no, of course not…" the blonde went on. He knelt back, placing his hands on his hips, and continued, "The mighty Seto Kaiba never gives up on a duel… am I right?"

"This isn't real…" Seto told himself, even as he felt his breath be slowly crushed out of him by the monster's tightening coils.

"What was that?" Bakura said, arching one eyebrow. He was kneeling at Seto's side, and he now leaned across, resting one hand on Kaiba's opposite shoulder and leering down at the captive brunet. "I didn't quite catch that." Seto gasped for air, yet still managed to shoot Bakura a venomous look.

"I think he's in trouble," Malik commented, kneeling behind Bakura and regarding Seto with his head cocked to one side. Bakura glanced over his shoulder, then back to Seto with a vaguely amused expression.

"You may be right," he said. He lazily trailed one finger over Seto's jaw, the contours of his neck, and the hollow at the base of his throat. "But he needn't worry." He smiled, a soft, deceptive smile. "I'm just playing with him."

"What I is /I this?" Seto managed to say, twisting in vain and arching his back, his strength starting to really leave him.

"This?" Bakura asked, gesturing to both the monster and himself. "This is just a little _magic_..."  
Malik laughed, twirling Seto's three Blue Eyes cards in his long fingers. "Just like maaagic..." he sang, with no discernible tune.

"You know, magic?" Bakura went on, leaning closer and whispering conspiratorially. "A little smoke and mirrors, a little I deception /I ? You know all about deception, don't you Mister Kaiba?" Seto glared up at him, but Bakura only smiled back. "And as for me? Here's a riddle… What creeps on the ground and clings to the pillars?"

"Oh, I know that one…" Malik commented, a sharp smile cutting across his angelic face. "A shadow."

Bakura rolled his eyes and gave a weary sigh, before giving a flick of his hand, at which the monster loosened its hold on Kaiba. The brunet inhaled deeply and quickly, feeling immense relief at the release of pressure on his lungs. "You're supposed to let him guess it," he snapped. By way of a reply, Malik ran a hand through his flaxen hair and shrugged. "Now the game's ruined."

"It was a boring game anyway," Seto said, slipping lithely out of his loosened restraints and leaping to the ground. Bakura's attention snapped back to him, and the spirit bounded to his feet, teeth bared, while Malik was left kneeling, and cursing in Egyptian. However, just as he jumped from the table, Seto's hand shot out, grabbing for Bakura's neck.

His head made a satisfying crunch as Seto slammed it into the wall, and the thief's thin hands scratched ineffectually at Seto's hand around his throat. Despite his short, gasping breaths, Bakura's eyes remained still, with the echo of condescension and superiority still in his face. Frustrated at the spirit's indifference, Seto grit his teeth and slammed Bakura's light body against the wall again. Suddenly though, the fiend's face changed: his dark eyes grew wider, rounder, and he let out a feeble whimper of appeal. Seto, struck by the abrupt, unexpected change, froze for a moment.

"K-K-Kaiba…!" the white haired boy gasped, genuine fear washing over a face that was pale with panic.

"…What?" Kaiba murmured, his grip loosening. Was this the same creature that had attacked him only moments ago?

He didn't have time to think on it, as from behind him he heard a shuffling sound, and before he could turn his hair was already in the claw-like grip of the boy Malik, though he, too, was changed. The blond had grabbed a fistful of Seto's hair and pulled hard, yanking him about like a rag doll, pulling him close and reaching around his shoulder to seize the cord of Seto's locket. This he pulled tight and wound around his hand at the back of Kaiba's neck, letting out a deep, cruel laugh as the cord tightened around Seto's throat. Seto strained his eyes to see the face of his assailant, while at the same time he scrabbled in vain at the cord that was rapidly cutting off his breathing.

Bakura, now free of Seto's grasp, slumped against the wall with his hands at his own throat, choking and breathing hoarsely. He looked up, liquid brown eyes half covered by soft spikes of snowy hair. "What? …Where am I?"

"That's a question more fitting for this one to ask," Malik said, his voice sounding distorted and much lower than usual. Kaiba remembered this Malik, but had been assured that he was gone for good at the end of that tournament. He was beginning to feel dizzy, and the panic forced him into action. He brought one arm forward and then drove his elbow back into Malik's stomach, feeling a certain amount of satisfaction when the blond doubled over on the impact, winded and angry, his hold on Seto's locket loosened. Moving swiftly now that his breathing was no longer so badly impaired, Seto clamped both his hands over Malik's and twisted out of the monster's reach. However, Malik had by this point recovered his breath, and had drawn something long and golden from his belt. Seto recognised the Sennen Rod, and ducked out of the way barely in time to avoid the Item's extended blade as Malik slashed the air with the Rod's pointed tip, aiming for Kaiba's face.

Bakura, having sunk to the floor, gasped and hurriedly crawled around them, hiding under the table, the long cloth resembling a shroud as it fell around his peeking white face.

Seto grabbed Malik's wrist, using the blond's own weight to throw off his balance, pulling him forward and around, managing to slam him against the wall before crunching his elbow into Malik's jaw, then quickly slamming his fist into the same spot with enough force to knock him out.

As the blond slumped to the floor, Seto glanced around at the wide-eyed boy under the table. Clearly he was not the same Bakura he had spoken with earlier, and it was just as clear that he would be of no use to him now. Turning away from him again, Seto knelt and picked up the golden artefact that Malik had wielded. "I thought Yugi had this now…?" he murmured. He fiddled with it for a moment before finding the mechanism to make the blade retract, and then stood up, weighing the ancient metal in his hands. As a weapon it could come in handy, even if he didn't believe in any of the magical crap Yugi and co. tended to spout about these Items. He slipped the Rod into his belt, and headed for the door. Before he could reach it he was stopped short by a deep voice.

"Where are you going?"

He turned back. Bakura, the dark Bakura he recognised by the malicious look in his dark eyes and the sardonic smirk, was stretched languidly across the floor upon his side, his feet still under the table, his head resting on one hand.

"What?"

"Where are you going?" the spirit repeated. "Without this?" In his first two fingers he twirled Seto's Blue Eyes White Dragon card, and Seto's eyes flicked to his deck, left forgotten on the table. With a gasp at his carelessness he doubled back, quickly retrieved his deck, before approaching Bakura. The spirit grinned and sat up, holding the Blue Eyes just out of Seto's reach and tripping him with a deft sweep of his leg. The brunet ended up on his knees leaning forward, reaching for the precious card, but Bakura's hand was at his throat, grasping a fistful of fabric of his shirt. "You'll want to be careful," he said softly, and Seto froze as their cheeks touched. Bakura exhaled slowly, before placing a small kiss on Seto's jaw and pressing the Blue Eyes into his hand. "It's dangerous out there."

With that he relinquished his hold on Kaiba and slid backward, letting Seto stand up. He gave Seto a final devious smile, before crawling toward Malik's crumpled form. Seto wasted no time in heading for the exit, and when he looked back, just once, Bakura was kneeling with the blond's head in his lap, a sleepy look on his ghostly white face.

"I never knew how much of a maze this place is," Pegasus muttered, absently running his fingers through his hair and giving a small tired sigh. He had been wandering, unhindered, for several minutes, finding nothing of interest or use. The next room he found, however, proved to be an entirely different affair.

"…Kaiba-boy?" Pegasus inched further into the starkly lit room, features rearranging themselves into a look of confused incredulity. "What the…

He peered closely at the peculiar set-up, scrutinising the face beneath the glass. A mask concealed most of it, but Pegasus would have recognised Seto Kaiba anywhere. "I wonder what this does," he murmured, poking at a few buttons with little regard for Kaiba's safety. When nothing appeared to happen he stood back, disappointed, and tapped his index finger against his chin in thought. "Dear me, Kaiba-boy, you do seem to get yourself into some awful fixes, don't you?"

An interesting looking contraption upon a shelf near Seto's head caught his eye, and he reached toward it, carefully lifting it from its place to inspect it with the curiosity of a small child. "You know I don't understand all this technical stuff," he chattered away to the unconscious and unreachable Kaiba. "Looks like one of your VR doodads…So, I just put it on my head like this…?"

At first there was nothing but darkness, thick opaque blackness like treacle over his eyes, but then grains of colour appeared and clustered together, looming shapes materialising in front of him. He found he was in a corridor, stretching endlessly out on either side, panelled in dark wood and sparsely lit from a seemingly invisible source. Immediately before him was a heavy door, upon which hung a gold plaque inscribed with the word "Guest". Pegasus frowned, and glanced sideways to the next door. It was remarkably similar to the first; only its surface was smooth and blank, to the point of even having no handle. A fleeting look up and down the hallway confirmed that all other visible doors were in the same state. Wrinkling his nose, Pegasus crossed his arms and remarked, "Whatever architect thought this place up should be shot."

With a shrug he grasped the handle of the "guest" door and twisted, pushing the door open to reveal an outline of bright light, into which he stepped. Well, he couldn't exactly hang about there all day, now, could he?


	7. Six: Thorns

_Go now, if you want it  
An otherworld awaits you...  
_

Seto's stride was brisk as he left the dining room behind him. He had practically slammed the double doors after him when he had exited that dark chamber, and had resisted looking back until now. He had chosen his route at random, becoming gradually more and more frustrated at the labyrinthine nature of the castle's hallways, until he found himself faced with this single door. It was set at the end of a corridor, and he had only two options: to go through it, or to retrace his steps. The door itself was plain and nondescript enough, unlike the gilded portal to the dining room. Considering its plain appearance, however, Seto suspected that it opened onto just another room, another dead end.

Still, he was reluctant to go back the way he had come, so he set his hand on the cold metal doorknob and twisted, pushing almost tentatively. It creaked as it opened; it seemed that every door in this place creaked, as though instructed to do so in order to provide the kind of creepy sound effects expected of old, imposing castles. To Seto's surprise, bright light flooded into the hallway as the door swung open, and when he had blinked a few times to adjust his eyes to the light, he found himself looking out on a vast, verdant garden. Aggressively bright sunlight beat down on the sloping lawns and made his eyes sting after having spent so long wandering the castle's gloomy halls. Frowning, Seto stepped forward. The soles of his boots met springy, soft grass; the door through which he had emerged did not even open onto a patio or path of any kind, and instead led straight onto the vibrant green lawn. Glancing back over his shoulder Seto could see that it was set directly into the yellow stone of the wall; though he had half expected to find it disappeared. Somewhat reassured by the apparent solidity of the door, he resolved to venture further into the garden. It was walled in on all visible sides by the castle itself, and much of it was darkened by the long shadows cast by the building's towers and turrets. Further ahead of him stood tall trees and bushes, and the lawns were broken up here and there by artistic arrangements of flowerbeds; in the hazy distance he could see figures milling about. He smiled. Finally, he had managed to find the rest of the duellists.

He began to walk forward, towards a meandering grey stone path that looked as though it led through the towering hedge of leylandii that extended part way out from the castle wall on his side of the garden. After a few steps along this path, though, something caught his eye and he glanced to the right. A neat flowerbed, carefully dug and tended, veritably overflowing with white and red blooms. Seto frowned and moved closer, only to have his face contort into a grimace when he realised what he was truly seeing. The flowers were large white roses; each of them white, yet from many of them dripped glistening red fluid that Seto could only conclude to be blood. Their velvety petals were slick with it, and the thicket of thorns beneath them were strung with it. Seto recoiled. The bed looked as though it had been the site of some ghastly murder, yet somehow from a distance the spatters of red gore on white had managed to look beautiful.

Seto returned to the path and quickened his pace. First he had been gassed, then lost, then attacked and threatened by a couple of crazed lunatics holding a tea party, and not to mention the talking painting... Now even the gardens were dressed with blood? Things were rapidly becoming stranger than Seto liked to deal with, and he resolved to interrogate the first person he met regarding Maximillion Pegasus's location. He grit his teeth as he walked, his hands clenching into fists. He planned to waste no time at all in letting Pegasus know just what he thought of this little tournament of his.

---

Unfortunately, even Pegasus did not know exactly where he was. It _looked_ like his room, but his common sense told him that it couldn't be. After all, he clearly remembered putting on that headset, and stepping through the mysterious door. However, turning around and peeking out the door through which he had just passed, he found that the dark, endless hallway was gone, and in its place was the gloomy downward spiral staircase that was the familiar access route to his bedroom in Duellist Kingdom. He frowned, tapping his finger against the doorframe in thought.

"…Interesting." He had the uncomfortable feeling that his exit had just been cut off, but he chose to gloss over that thought for now. Feeling trapped would probably not help the situation, he decided in an uncharacteristic bout of level-headedness.

He returned his attention to the bedroom. To all outward appearances, it was identical to his own room. Still… he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something… _off_ about it all. Things were placed in ways that he would not have put them, and everything looked just a little bit too new, too polished to be real.

Curiosity getting the better of him, he crossed the room to kneel by the bedside table, and quietly slid out the top draw. He wasn't sure why he felt compelled to stay quiet, but nevertheless he did feel as though sneaking were necessary; he felt like a child exploring a room he had been expressly forbidden from entering, or else a burglar trespassing in someone else's home.

He smiled as his hands found what he was looking for, and he drew the object out with something akin to reverence.

He hadn't written in his journal for several months. It just seemed that there was so little to write about these days, that it simply didn't warrant the effort involved in looking for a pen. At the same time, though, he had never been able to bring himself to throw the thing away. Now looking at it, or at least a pretty spotless replica of it, he found himself wondering why he had bothered. Everything he had written in it was still clear enough in his mind for him to be able to replay it like a video.

He paused for only a moment, letting his fingertips ghost over the book's comfortingly familiar leather cover, before flipping it open and starting to thumb through the thick pages. It was as he had suspected. Every page was blank.

Rising to his feet again, he discarded the empty book on the bed. He crossed to the window and glanced out; the sky was bright blue, but there was something artificial about that light. It was too yellow, too abrasive.

"Kaiba-boy, where are you?" he murmured, resting his hands on the stone sill.

---

"You're sure you want to do this?" the boy asked, again.

His brother turned to give him an exasperated look. "For the last time, _yes_. I told you… I was getting bored. I think it's time I liven up the show a little."


	8. Seven: Mimesis

_Your petals start to fall,  
And the weeds attack.  
In my torture garden  
The blue sky is black…_

My Ruin - 'My Beautiful Flower'

Glancing over his shoulder once more, Pegasus allowed himself a small sigh of relief. He may not be entirely sure where he was or what he had managed to get himself into, but one thing seemed sure, at least: he was no longer being pursued. The halls he traversed were eerily empty, and virtually silent, his footsteps muffled by the plush carpets.

He had yet to encounter a door; since descending from the tower which held the replica of his room, he had followed the same hallway as it curved gently. He assumed he was following the curve of the castle wall, though was perplexed as to why there had been no turn-offs or doors.

As if it had not been clear from the polished artificiality of the bedroom, put together like a stage set, he knew for certain now that this was not his castle. It was similar, and had similar features - the yellow stones, for example, or the style of décor - but if it was a copy then its architect had clearly paid no attention to the layout of the edifice he was supposed to be imitating. Pegasus knew every nook and cranny of his own castle, apart from some of the more obscure passages in the dungeons, and this was certainly not it. This was a new domain, a new labyrinth.

After pacing the hallway for some time, her glanced up to see a break in the otherwise endless monotony of the stone wall.

"What's this?" he murmured to himself, peering ahead. It was! A door. decorated He quickened his pace until he reached the portal, and paused a moment to examine it. With an artist's eye for detail, he noticed the delicate design of golden leaves on its elaborate gilt frame; mostly holly and what might have been common privet, twining thorny stems and gilt roses, lifelike if not for their burnished golden colour and their lifeless rigidity. The door itself was painted a dingy white, its handle a deep bronze that did not seem to match the ornamental frame.

Shrugging, Pegasus tried the handle. To his surprise, it opened without resistance, swinging open to reveal blue sky, daylight flooding into the gloomy hallway. He blinked a few times, then stepped outside into a sizeable square courtyard. Underfoot was a fine gravel, forming a wide path that stretched ahead and to both the right and left, while the rest of the space was taken up with two neat squares of lawn, the whole area enclosed with tall leylandii hedges. To the right, the path terminated at a tall wooden gate, while to the left it continued right up to the hedge, at the base of which was set a bench. The spot would have been a pleasant place to sit and watch the day, had the bench not been half rotten and collapsing on a broken leg. From the hedge extended tendrils of ivy which wrapped themselves around the seat's slats and iron arms, as though reclaiming something dead. Pegasus shuddered.

Turning his attention to the path leading right, he began to walk, and let the door clunk shut behind him. He did not hear the click of the lock, sealing itself, preventing his return.

When he tried the gate he found it was steadfastly locked with a chain and padlock he had failed to notice before. In frustration he rattled the iron handle, then kicked the bottom of the gate. It wobbled a little, its aged hinges crying out at the rough treatment, but still did not yield.

Pegasus sighed, glanced around, and made for the only other means of egress he could see. The central path led to a gap in the hedges, and beyond that more hedge, as the path parted and went in opposite directions. After glancing both ways, and realising that both routes turned sharp corners a few metres in, he shrugged and picked the left, on a whim. One sharp turn to the right at the end and he could see his path stretching off before him, various turnings along the way. He sighed. He had traded one maze for another. However, seeing little alternative, he squared his shoulders and strode on.

---

"What the fuck…?" Seto muttered, eyeing the scene before him with a bemused air. He had crossed a large expanse of grass, and was approaching a cluster of brightly dressed figures on a particularly flat area of lawn by one of the castle's walls. He frowned, glanced back over his shoulder at the sparse, milling crowd. They remained as blithe as ever, chattering happily in words he could neither fully hear nor understand. They paid him no attention, despite his obviously agitated state.

"Oh, bother!"

Seto turned at the sound of this, eerily familiar voice. It belonged to a figure taller than the rest, dressed in dusky red, half the face covered by a gold, bejewelled mask more ornate than the others'. Long silken hair of a strange rosy hue streamed tied back with a shining ribbon, a small gilt and beaded crown set askew on his head. He held a long slender croquet mallet on one hand, while his other was a fist, a gesture of frustration. Glancing down, Seto saw a red ball roll to a stop, shy of the hoop. The cronies surrounding this central, crowned gentlemen made noises of commiseration, shaking their heads sadly, clasping their hands together or shuffling their feet. One, a petite blonde woman in pink and powder blue, offered, "Allow me," and, with a small curtsey, toed the ball through the hoop on its intended course. The cluster of players and observers clapped and laughed in what struck Seto as a curiously artificial manner, as though their jollity were an obligation rather than an impulse.

"Marvellous, your majesty, just marvellous!" crowed one.

At this point, Seto stepped forward, arms folded. "I'm pretty sure that's cheating," he said, his tone deadpan. The entire group turned toward him, blank eyes in masked faces staring as though he had just stepped out of the air. The central figure, however, smiled a small, crooked smile and reached up one elegant hand to remove the mask. Playful grey eyes met his, and Seto found his frown deepening to a scowl.

"I can't say I'm surprised," he said. "This farce of a tournament just wouldn't be complete without a crackpot like you."

"Oh, Kaiba, you flatter me," Siegfried said.

"I do?" Seto said with one eyebrow raised.

"Of course. You're glad to have me here, yes? That is what you just said."

"I see you're just as delusional as ever," Seto replied, looking away, an expression of disgust on his face.

Siegfried only smiled, and returned his attention to the game. Lining up carefully, he managed to tap the next ball through its correct hoop. He smiled with satisfaction.

"Oh, nice shot, sir," came a soft female voice, and the company turned to what had been a window, set without ornamentation into the castle wall. Now instead of a hole, that same space was taken up with a picture, similarly sunken into the bricks, of a young woman, and one Seto recognised. She smiled and flipped her hair, the delicately painted tresses falling over one shoulder, reflecting no light.

"No one invited you, you old harpy," Siegfried shot, aiming a sharp look in Cecilia's direction. "Dead women aren't supposed to speak, you know."  
Cecilia pulled a mocking face and shrugged her elegant shoulders. "Well, I'm sorry, _Your Majesty_," she replied with a pout, her voice dripping with disdain. "Forgive me if I show a little interest in what goes on here. This castle is usually so boring." She raised a slender hand to her mouth and yawned.

"And I'm the latest news?" Seto asked, one eyebrow raised.

The woman turned her heavy-lidded eyes on him and smiled, a feline, languorous smile. "Of course, honey. You're _big news_ here, you know."

"Enough!" Siegfried snapped, cutting her short. "You have no place here. Hold your tongue."

"Oh, what are you going to do?"

Siegfried's eyes flashed, and he swiftly took a blade from one of his female attendant's belts and flung it in Cecilia's direction. The dead woman had just enough time to yelp in surprise before the blade hit the canvas with a thud, it's point piercing the material and sticking in the wall behind. Seto winced at the sound, though when he glanced her way, he found that the painting was empty, and now contained nothing but its shadow-grey background. He found himself smirking; for a dead woman, she was pretty quick.

Siegfried grit his teeth in frustration, then closed his eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, and regained his composure.

"That's the trouble, sir," said the woman from whom he had borrowed the sword. She was a statuesque woman with extremely pale hair, and she spoke with the traces of a Scandinavian accent. "It's very hard to behead someone who has no body."

The next time Seto's eyes wandered toward Cecilia's picture, he found that it was no longer even there. The space it had inhabited was once again merely a window, a plain rectangular hole in the wall, with nothing but shadows beyond. The pale haired woman's sword fell with a clatter over the sill and onto the grass.

---

It was almost enjoyable, for a time. Each twist and turn took him somewhere new, and he let the maze lead him, unsure as to whether he was heading for the centre or for the other side. Eventually, however, his feet began to ache, his steps drag, and his whole body slowed as his enthusiasm waned. The sky was still the same unchanging blue, and was the only thing he could see beyond the tall walls of green.

His hands in his pockets now, Pegasus began to whistle. The tune was aimless, just like his route. He had lost track of which direction he was travelling in a long time ago, and now all directions were the same. Idly he wondered if he might end up wandering those twisting paths until he eventually died of starvation, or exhaustion.

Turning another corner, he spotted something ahead that made him pause. The light was different, and… yes. He craned his head, and was rewarded with the most pleasing sight he had encountered since entering this strange virtual world: a gap in the hedge, leading to, instead of more hedged pathways, an open space. He laughed and jogged the short distance to the opening, and was relieved to find that it was, indeed, an exit. He must have bypassed the centre somehow, though he found he was not terribly eager to retrace his steps just to discover what lay in the labyrinth's core. Instead he stepped gratefully out of the maze, and was greeted with the sound of bees humming and unseen birds twittering somewhere above him. He hadn't realised just how silent it had been in the maze until these new waves of sound flowed into his ears.

After a few yards of springy grass on either side of his gravel path, the way proceeded under an arch of white trellis, heavily laden with red and white roses and flanked on either side by beds of tall rose bushes and the spires of ornamental privet hedges. Once through this arch he glanced up, smiling to see the area partially shaded from the intensely yellow sunlight by further trellises, covered with clematis and climbing roses. The honey sweet scent of the blossoms invaded his senses and began to lull him into a pleasant, dreamy state, aided by the gentle babble of a small fountain which stood in the centre of the circular area. Smaller paths led off from this central point, each of them covered by rose decorated archways..

His smile faded, however, when he finally focused clearly upon the blooms without allowing himself to be affected by the place's hazy atmosphere. The flowers' scent turned cloying, and he brought a hand to his mouth as nausea threatened to take over. The taste of bile in his throat, he forced himself to look clearly upon the roses, white roses, daubed in glistening red. Here and there globs dripped, seeping between the gaps in the gravel, and gradually turning the fountain's water pink.

Barely suppressing a moan, he put his head down and ran past the happily gurgling fountain and under the arch straight ahead. This took him into a distressingly narrow corridor, lined with the same bloody leaves and roses, their stems twisting and clinging to the flaking wood of the trellis like thin fingers, their thorns reaching out to him and catching on his clothing.

When at last he emerged into an open, airy space it was with a bout of coughing and the feeling of dizziness. He barely had time to register his new surroundings - wide open space covered in lawns, distantly enclosed by the castle's walls, the shadow of a building on his not-so-distant right - before collapsing on the ground, rendered temporarily weak by his light head.

There was blood on his hands, he noticed. Just tiny rivulets and smudges, but all the same it was blood. Blood on his hands again.

Squeezing his eye shut he shook his head, pressing the heels of his hands to his forehead. He was being stupid. It was disgusting, yes, and horrifying, but he knew that it was only an illusion. He had put that head-set on, had entered this world willingly. It was all just smoke and mirrors, the kind of technological magic Seto liked to work.

Slowly he opened his eye, looking up to see the lush expanse of grass before him, hedges and flowers and walls in the distance, and several milling figures wandering the meandering paths that spread like veins across the lawns. He shakily got to his feet, scanned the area, and frowned when he saw one jarringly familiar figure. He was a long way away, but that coat couldn't have belonged to anyone else.

With blood spattered on his clothes and skin, and in his hair, Pegasus began to make his way across the castle grounds, towards Seto Kaiba.

---

"Care for a bite to eat?"

"What?"

Siegfried gestured toward a long trestle table covered with a pale cloth, laden with a colourful array of eatables. Small sandwiches, made with white bread, no crusts, cut into tiny triangles. Scones filled with thick clotted cream and red jam. Cakes of every variety: little iced cupcakes, fairy cakes with spongy wings, huge ballooning pastries, filled to bursting with whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce. All of these were arranged on fine china stands, three layers each, and all of them looked eminently unappetising.

"I had this little picnic made specially," Siegfried said, clasping his hands together and smiling in his saccharine way, making Seto feel sick. "Won't you try something?"

Seto spared him a sneer. "I'm not hungry," he said. Siegfried cocked his head to one side, his eyes wide and pleading, a look that Seto found positively repulsive. "And you look pathetic," he added.

Siegfried lowered his eyes and began to chuckle softly. "Well, if you won't eat, then… Won't you at least play a game with me?"

Seto looked at him for a long moment. He looked distinctly unimpressed. "Croquet?" he said.

Siegfried laughed. "That's not your style?" Still smiling, he reached into his trouser pocket and withdrew a familiar brown, rectangular objects. A deck of cards. "Well then," he said. "How about a game you're more familiar with?"


	9. Eight: Smoke and Mirrors

_Wind up your reasons, demons and ghosts  
Wind up your circuitry, loves you the most… _

-'Wings of Steel' by Collide

---

Seto began, slowly, to smirk. "You really think you have what it takes to beat me? After what happened last time?"

Siegfried briefly narrowed his eyes in a sour expression, but in an instant his face was clear again, and he was smiling blithely. "If at first you don't succeed," he said, his tone singsong.

"You just don't know when to quit, do you?" Seto laughed, and slipped a hand into his pocket, retrieving his deck. "Well, I guess I could play with you for a while. You'd make for an easy victory, after all."

"So confident, Herr Kaiba," Siegfried replied, cocking his head to one side. His attendants chuckled, their eyes flashing behind their masks. "You know what they say about pride."

"No, I don't," Seto replied, being deliberately obstructive. He found himself missing his duel disk, and wondering again how this tournament was supposed to work.

"It comes before a fall," Siegfried said, his tone hardening slightly. He slammed his deck down on the corner of the trestle table. "Because I'm feeling charitable, I'll let you make the first move," he said, bowing slightly.

"How gracious." Seeing no other way to proceed, Seto drew the top few cards from his deck, somehow managing not to drop the entire lot of them. He glanced critically down at his hand, and couldn't suppress the frown at the poor selection he seemed to have drawn. He now regretted replacing the Blue Eyes to the bottom of the deck.

"Well?" Siegfried said. Seto looked up to see him with one hand on his hip, staring at him with a vaguely amused, if impatient, expression on his face.

"Fine," Seto said, temporarily transferring his deck back into his pocket so that he could use his other hand to select a single card from his hand. "Vampire Lord, in attack mode," he said, holding up the card face out, hoping that it would somehow activate just as Bakura's monster card had done back in the dining room.

After a moment's uneasy hesitation, the card's face blazed with golden light, and from it burst forth a luminous shape which hastily formed itself into the form of the monster itself - a young man with paper white skin and light blue hair, dressed in a billowing black cape, looking like he had just stepped out of a bad horror movie. Kaiba smirked in satisfaction, happy that his theory had worked.

However, mere instants after being summoned, the vampire began to cower, bringing the heavy fabric of his cloak up to shield his face.

"What?" Kaiba cried, incredulous. The thing was a hologram; it had to behave in a pre-programmed way, and this was not it. As smoke began to rise from his monsters hunched form, Seto fixed Siegfried with an accusatory look. "What the hell…?"

Siegfried merely shrugged, smiling. "Don't you know anything about vampires?" he said, in a jovial, mocking tone. Kaiba only glared at him. "They _hate_ the sunlight."

Kaiba watched in dismay as his Vampire Lord cowered in pain, doubling over and clutching at himself even as the exposed grey skin of his face began to blister and char.

"How are you doing this?" Seto demanded. He grit his teeth and watched in horror as his Vampire sank to his knees, his shoulders hunched, his cloak held over his bowed head in an attempt to shield himself from the fierce sun's harmful rays.

"Hmm? Me?" Siegfried said in a deliberately innocent tone of voice, and he pointed to himself, his eyes wide. "My dear Herr Kaiba, it is nothing to do with _me_... Blame your ignorance of vampire lore."

"But the holo-"

"Brunhilde, if you would be so kind," Siegfried continued, interrupting Kaiba mid-word. "Since poor Kaiba's monster seems so afflicted, we may as well seize the points advantage and put it out of its misery."

"I agree, sir," said one of the three tall blonde women who formed a part of Siegfried's party. Pulling a blade from a sheath at her belt, she stepped forward and shifted into an offensive stance.

"Be a dear and _behead_ this tiresome creature," Siegfried said. The woman nodded, and before Kaiba could react she had launched herself forward and swung her blade at the vampire's head. Instead of the gentle swoosh and evaporation into light to which Seto was accustomed whenever a monster was destroyed, there was a gruesome _shlick_ as the blade sliced cleanly through the helpless vampire's neck, followed by a grim thud as its head hit the grassy earth.

"What - have you done?" Kaiba asked haltingly, revulsion clear on his face as the now headless monster slumped forward onto the lawn, before quietly disintegrating into ashes. Seto paused. "Or is this Pegasus's latest idea of a joke?" he said, expression turning sour.

Siegfried laughed, shrugged, and then glanced about at his entourage until they joined him in his mirth. "Oh, how should I know?" he said. Then, as quickly as the flip of a coin, his expression turned coldly serious. "Now Brunhilde." He looked once again at his obedient female warrior. "It seems that Herr Kaiba has left himself unprotected." He met Seto's narrowed eyes with a look of cold amusement. "Attack his life points directly."

"Yes sir!" the woman said, and immediately advanced toward the incensed brunet.

"You cheating-!" Seto began, his face a mask of anger. At the same moment Brunhilde lifted her sword and hefted it swiftly toward his head. Someone behind Seto yelled his name, and he heard the sound of running feet before, a mere second later, something slammed into his side, pitching him ungracefully to the ground. He landed with someone's heavy mass above him, and heard too the vain rush of air made by the woman's sword cleaving the air where, an instant before, his head had been.

The woman let out a grunt of annoyance, Siegfried a cry of stunned frustration and rage. Seto spewed forth a string of obscenities directed at the mysterious and unwelcome newcomer who had just so rudely - and so violently - shoved him.

"I said attack him!" Siegfried shouted, and barely a second later Seto had to quickly roll out of the way of a downward thrust from Brunhilde's sword. The blade stuck in the soft earth, giving him enough time to spring to his feet. Confused and significantly pissed off, he turned to his newest assailant, only to freeze in incomprehension upon beholding his face.

"Pegasus?"

"Brunhilde!" interrupted Siegfried.

"One moment, sir - it is still our turn." Brunhilde succeeded in pulling her sword free of the ground, and readied to swing at Kaiba again.

"Don't just stand here!" Pegasus cried urgently, and, aiming a brief alarmed look at the pale haired woman, grabbed the lapel of Kaiba's coat and began to pull him away.

"Are you insane? It's just a holo-" Kaiba began, but he left off when he heard - and felt - the tip of Brunhilde's sword whistle past the back of his head, Pegasus having only just pulled him out of harm's way in time.

"Will you just shut up and come with me?" Pegasus pleaded, not waiting for Kaiba to acquiesce before leading him away. He was practically dragging the younger man, having moved his hold on him from his lapel to his wrist.

Seto, however, no longer needed to be told. Narrowly dodging another of Brunhilde's clumsy yet powerful swings, he began to run, and, as they fled down the gently sloping croquet lawn and the gardens beyond, he actually overtook Pegasus.

"What the hell is going on here?" he growled, eventually slowing to a jog and wrenching his hand from Pegasus's surprisingly strong grip. He glanced over his shoulder, then back to Pegasus. "And what the fuck happened to you?" The older man was dressed as sharply as ever - in black and white, rather than red, but still in his typical flamboyant style - but his usually immaculate dress was spattered with red, as was his hair and some of his face. Before Pegasus could reply, Seto was looking over his shoulder again. No one was giving chase; in fact, he could clearly discern Siegfried's figure standing motionless, as though content to watch him leave.

"I promise I'll tell you what I know," Pegasus said, sounding slightly out of breath, "as soon as we're somewhere safer."

They had once again reached one of the castle's walls - what looked like a kind of gatehouse, set out from the wall proper and topped with a clock tower, the face of which was without hands. A tall wrought iron gate stood half open, and it was through this that Pegasus now pulled Seto. Seto glanced up as he passed under the gate's pointed arch, only to find himself stared at by sandy stone gargoyles positioned, he imagined, specifically to so greet anyone who happened to pass this way. For the brief instant he saw them he felt that they looked familiar, though he didn't have time to dwell on them before Pegasus once again grabbed his coat and pulled him into the tunnel-like porch and clanged the gate shut behind them. Somewhat frantically, Pegasus looked for a lock, but found none.

Seto looked away, taking a moment to glanced around and take stock of his new surroundings. Directly opposite that through which they had entered stood another gate, though this one was already closed. Approaching, Seto saw that this one was securely fastened with chains and padlocks, though many of these were rusted over. Through the gate Seto saw the island stretching away, a long stone staircase descending into thick, dark forest, which stretched for miles, to the sea that Seto could only just see, glittering cruelly on the horizon.

"We can't get out," Pegasus said, stepping up behind him. Seto looked at him with a sharp, curious air, yet said nothing. Pegasus sighed and, gazing out toward that distant sea, held loosely onto one of the gate's bars and leaned his forehead against the sun-warmed metal. "He's trapped us in here like pets."

"…What?"

Pegasus looked at him then, as though coming to his senses. "We can't talk in here. Come on, let's get inside."

The vestibule in which they had taken refuge had two doors, one in each gateless wall, and both of them were similarly tall, broad, and imposing. Pegasus approached one and opened it a crack, before gingerly peering inside. Seto watched him with a raised eyebrow; he had planned on properly confronting Pegasus about the tournament - demanding some sort of explanation - but Pegasus had already disappointed him by not appearing half as smug as Seto had expected. In fact, he seemed agitated, almost - could Seto believe it? - scared.

Apparently deciding that it was safe to proceed, Pegasus glanced over his shoulder and beckoned, before pushing the creaking door open and stepping inside. For want of anything better to do, Seto followed.

The room they stepped into was vast; the ceiling was high and vaulted, made of a dingy off-yellow stone, and the tall leaded windows were topped with stone arches, decorated with carved roses, cherubs, and monsters. The room's most striking feature, however, was the collection of paintings that adorned the walls. Every possible inch of wall space was taken up with either canvas or frame, and Pegasus paused for a long moment to stare in admiration at the array - landscapes, still lifes, portraits; the variety was impressive.

Seto remained unaffected, closed the door, and then fixed Pegasus with an impatient glare.

"Now," he said, folding his arms, his tone cold. "You have some explaining to do."

---

"Didn't you want to go after them?"

Siegfried turned and eyed the boy with an irritable sneer. Leon, unfazed, removed his own, silver mask and continued, "I mean, you almost had them there."

"You misunderstand, Leon," Siegfried replied. "My wish is not simply to kill him."

"It isn't?" his little brother asked, looking unconvinced.

"Oh no," Siegfried replied. An echo of his old coy smile returned to his face. "I could have had Herr Kaiba killed at any point. You'd be amazed at the things that money can buy." Leon's expression suggested that he wouldn't, but he said nothing. "No, no, I want… much more than that. Before, I wanted to humiliate him, and to take back the technology and the money that he stole from me. Of course, he and his little sidekick _Mutou_ put an end to _that_ plan," he continued sourly. Leon frowned; he could sit back and let his brother do whatever he liked with Kaiba, but it made him uncomfortable to hear anyone bad mouth the duellist he still idolised. "This time," Siegfried went on, the smallest smile teasing the corner of his mouth, "I am taking no chances…"

---

Pegasus looked uncomfortable. He bit his lower lip and fidgeted, until eventually he met Kaiba's slow, icy gaze.

"Well," he began. "As you can probably tell, my big comeback tournament isn't quite going according to plan…" Seto raised an eyebrow. "And it seemed like such a _good_ idea at the time…" Pegasus trailed off, looking forlorn.

"Any time you want to start making sense, Pegasus, you let me know."

"I'm _trying_," Pegasus protested. "If you'd just _listen_…"

"I'm all ears," Seto said calmly, folding his arms.

"Okay… well…" Pegasus didn't truly know where to begin, so he decided to start with the most obvious, and possibly the most important point. "None of this is real."

---


	10. Nine: Haunted

_Come here  
Pretty please  
Can you tell me where I am?  
You… Won't you say something?  
I need to get my bearings  
I'm lost  
And the shadows keep on changing._

_-_'Haunted' by Poe.

* * *

"_Okay… well…" Pegasus didn't truly know where to begin, so he decided to start with the most obvious, and possibly the most important point. "None of this is real."_

Seto sighed in unconcealed irritation. "That's what I've been trying to tell you people for years," he said. "You and Yugi and every crackpot duellist to step out of obscurity - the monsters aren't real, there's no such thing as magic!"

Pegasus regarded him with a patient air, as one might a stupid but endearing child. "Don't be silly," he said with a laugh. "Of course there is - but that's beside the point."

"What?"

"What I'm trying to tell you is that _this whole castle _is an illusion."

Seto appeared nonplussed. "What about the rest of the island, huh? And you announcing this tournament? Was that an 'illusion' too?"

"No! Well… no. But that's not important at the moment…" He began to pace, his gaze downcast and thoughtful. "You need to understand the world you're in… the dangers-"

"What are you now, my guardian angel?" Seto interrupted with disgust. "Give me a break, Pegasus. If I'm in any _danger_, it's your fault. We both know that we hate each other."

With this, he pushed past Pegasus and began to stride the length of the gallery, aiming for the only other exit: an ornate, heavy door set into the far wall.

Pegasus, taken aback by Seto's sudden and callous outburst, watched him with a blank expression. His complexion coloured as he mumbled, somewhat indignantly, "That's not true…"

He started to trot after Seto, still eager to tell him what he knew of the strange domain they had both stumbled into. "Kaiba-boy, wait - !" he tried, but Seto ignored him and continued to walk. Pegasus was abut to jog to catch up with him, when a particular painting caught his eye.

It was one he knew well. Very well, in fact, as he was the one who had painted it. The original, anyway. He felt a sudden rush of anger at the fact that his captors had gone to the lengths of putting such detailed copies of his own work into this mockery of a world - work that he had never displayed outside his own castle, no less. However, what truly got to him wasn't the audacity of its creators in placing the replica there, but in the painting's subject herself.

She sat in a familiar pose, her face turned out towards him, her hands clasped loosely in her lap. Cecilia, his wife, stared out at him with such baleful eyes that his heart ached only to look at her; her rendering was so lifelike that he almost felt like he could reach up and touch her, and feel something other than cold, lifeless canvas.

"Kaiba, a minute…" he mumbled, but he could already hear the younger man opening the gallery door. He sighed; he couldn't afford to lose Seto to this maze again. Who knew when (or if) he would ever find him again? He turned away from the painting, intending to catch up with Kaiba before he disappeared into the castle's labyrinthine hallways, too arrogant to bother to wait for the only person who might be of some help to him.

"It's already too late, you know…" came a soft voice from his immediate right. At that same moment he heard the gallery door clank shut. Seto had left him. He froze, and then slowly turned toward the painting, hardly daring to hope - or dread - what he might see.

Cecilia sat just as she had before, her face as open and blithe as ever, just as unmoving as ever. That voice, though… he had known it. He had known it too well.

He studied the woman's painted countenance for a moment, before murmuring, "Am I going crazy…?"

Had he not been studying her so intently, he would have missed the smile which suddenly, yet so slightly, animated her lips. He blinked, convinced he was hallucinating, before this belief was dashed by a sudden widening of that smile into a feline grin, accompanied by the silver chime of her laugh, gentle and childlike.

"Oh, I can't keep this up for long, love," said her painted lips, in a voice that was too familiar, even while the years had made it alien. "This needless pretence." He felt cold; there was a suck lurching feeling in his gut, and a clutch around his heart.

Pegasus was a man who believed in things. There wasn't much point in _not_ believing, he reasoned, when more often than not the supernatural turned out to be real, and, in the course of his own life, practically commonplace. He had toyed with gods, created monsters, dabbled in magic, and held souls in his hands. Why would he deny the existence of ghosts? Especially when he had lost his hope to one, and his Eye to another.

He had been haunted by _her_ for years, anyway; her face always behind his eyes, taking shape on unnumbered canvases, that musical voice and those clear wide eyes forming the basis of his desperate dreams. Those frail, fevered hopes he had nursed for so long, hopes and plans for her return, had led inevitably to his undoing, and it was only then, years after her death, that he had finally broken. He still recalled that finishing move, his deck scattering about him as his legs buckled, the rushing weight of his final, final defeat crushing down on him. The eating hopelessness. Skulking away to his solitary tower, the blank cards, the broken glass. And then, of course, the thief come to take the only thing he had left, and to finish it all.

At least, he had hoped.

In the weeks following, he had wished so desperately that he had; after all, surely it would have been easier to pluck an eye from a still corpse than a squirming victim?

He had slowly crawled his way out of that mire, climbing with faltering steps until - it must have been… how many months? - he had been able to return to some sense of normalcy. Some sense of sanity. He had put his cards away, all neat in their case, and retired from the world, choosing instead to live a peaceful hermetic existence with his chateau, a new island, his studio, and his memories, hazier now and more resignedly distant. His mad dreams had been swept away by children and spirits, and he had let them, and her, go.

She, who was now gazing down at him with a familiar, amused smile, her oil-paint eyes holding a glint of mischief that he didn't remember. He felt as though the hill that he had been slowly and steadily climbing had suddenly cracked and crumbled, and he was falling right back down to where he had started.

"You…" he said. She cocked her head to one side, her tumbling hair rippling like molten gold, falling over her face and obscuring one eye.

"Why, what's wrong, honey?" she said, in a voice like syrup. She leaned forward and extended one elegant arm, reaching out of her frame towards him. Without thinking he moved closer, tilting his head upward, letting her take his face in her hand. Her touch was gentle, but so cold, rough like canvas and paint, not smooth like skin.

_None of this is real_; his own words replayed in his mind, yet went unheeded. She always had had a way about her that made him disregard logic, rationality, truth… sanity.

"What's wrong?" she repeated, slowly. "Cat got your tongue?"

* * *

Seto let the gallery door clank shut behind him. 

"I don't have time for this," he muttered. If Pegasus wanted to be cryptic, then let him, but Seto wasn't going to wait around all day for him. If Pegasus felt like giving a straight answer, he would just have to catch up.

Glancing around, Seto found himself in a short, wide hallway, made dingy by the small arching windows dressed with heavy curtains, their rich blood colour faded time, light, and dust. The windows threw weak shafts of light across the grey gloom, and he could see the dust motes dancing like gold filings, spinning over one another on the air. He wrinkled his nose and wafted one hand before him, fighting the impulse to cough.

On the right hand wall, below the windows, stood vast shelf units, standing empty and redundant. Ahead was another door, identical to the one through which he had just passed, imposing and shut. To the left was a set of broad stone steps beside an alcove formed by the flight doubling back half a floor above. He stepped forward to try the door. Rattling the handle, he found it was locked fast; he cursed under his breath and moved to turn towards the stairs. As he turned, he heard the other door open and close, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of black clothing and white hair disappearing out of sight, heading for the floor above.

"Pegasus!" he growled, and gave chase, fully intending to grab the older man by the hair if he had to. He had yet to fully interrogate him, after all. "Get back here." He ascended the stairs in bounds of two and three steps at a time, swiftly climbing the two short flights to the next floor. He arrived on the first floor landing just in time to see the door close. That way led back over the gallery; Seto frowned and wondered where the hell Pegasus was going, where he was leading him.

Beyond the door was a long empty hall, as wide as the gallery below, yet holding nothing but threadbare carpet and undressed windows. A trail of footprints in the dust led to the opposite side, where a door closed just as Seto entered. Kaiba grit his teeth and followed swiftly, crossing the length of the gallery, the gated entranceway, and the gallery's length again before reaching the exit. This opened onto another stairwell, identical to the one he had left behind, only mirrored. One quick glance around and he spied a shadow disappearing down, back towards the ground floor. "Pegasus, stop!" he called after him. "What the hell is he up to now?" he muttered to himself, and began to descend the stairs. One the ground floor he was met with two doors, one leading back to the outside, the other - just swinging shut - leading further into the castle. Seto sighed and followed, pushing the second door open.

The room into which he stepped was even dimmer than the stairwell, and there was a musky smoke in the air that stung his eyes and clouded his senses, the incense's scent hanging heavy in the air. Ahead of him stretched a straight walkway, flanked by rows of dark wooden pews, seating only shadows. The chamber was illuminated by fat church candles, arranged around an altar and on shelves around the walls, though the flickering light thrown out by those small flames did little to penetrate the thick shadows that lingered like smog around the chapel's elaborately painted ceiling and high arching windows.

Before the altar, blotting out some of the candle's light even further, was a hulking shape, and as Seto's eyes adjusted to the gloom he discerned that it was a man kneeling. He was too bulky to be Pegasus, whose form was tall but more willowy; indeed, over the last few years he seemed to have become thinner, until, with that ethereal silver hair of his, he looked practically insubstantial. As Seto took a couple of loud, echoing steps into the chapel, the kneeling man rose to his feet. Beyond him, above the alter and through the drifting smoke, Seto caught a glimpse of a stone frieze, elegantly carved with what looked like three beasts intertwined. His attention was on the man, though, and he started as he thought he saw, amid the coiling clouds of fragrant smoke, the echo of the shape of wings, pale grey feathers translucent and ghostly. The illusion disappeared as he turned to face Seto, and Kaiba dismissed it as just another trick. The man's face, when he stepped forward into the dull gold light, was far more arresting.

"You?" Seto said.

"You should be used to seeing familiar faces 'round here," said a voice to his left, and Seto turned to see a boy reclining on one of the pews, his body almost completely swallowed by shadows. Why hadn't he noticed him there before? He had his head down , his elbows resting on the back of the seat, his feet resting on the top of the pew in front, his ankles crossed. The candlelight glanced off the goggles he wore atop his head, creating the impression of an insect's oversized eyes. Seto glanced to the larger man, who was adjusting his gloves with a serious expression on his face.

"Where's Pegasus?" Seto tried.

A chuckle behind him, and that familiar, grating voice, "Oh, Kaiba-boy, you were looking for me?"

Twisting around quickly, Seto glared into the darkness. Beside the door stood a figure, the light picking out ribbons of hair, details of clothing. "Pegasus?"

"Now, now," the other man said in Pegasus' voice. "You never learn, do you?" He stepped forward, smiling, and brought one slender hand up as though to clasp a handful of his long hair. When he brought it down again it was like he was drawing away a veil; the light seemed to shift, bend, and Seto's vision betrayed him.

Recorded words replayed in Kaiba's head, "A world where nothing is as it seems... This particular rabbit hole goes deeper than you might imagine."

Casting his disguise aside, the young man lifted his slate grey eyes to Seto's, and spoke in his own voice, "Fancy falling for the same trick twice. I thought you were meant to be smart?" He tossed his auburn hair and smirked, placing one hand on his hip as he regarded Seto darkly. "I've looked forward this you know… Getting my hands on you again…"

* * *


	11. Ten: Curiouser and Curiouser

_Some say I'm crazy for my love, Oh my love  
But no bonds can hold me from your side, Oh my love  
They don't know you can't leave me  
They don't hear you singing to me..._

Evanescence - 'Even in Death'

* * *

"Say something, love." Her voice was gentle, coaxing, easing him forward. Pegasus' tongue felt thick in his mouth, and his throat was too dry to allow speech to slip out. "Aren't you pleased to see me?" 

"You're not real," he choked out, barely louder than a whisper.

"You sound so sure," she replied, leaning ever closer. He started as he felt her cold breath on the side of his neck as she exhaled, then murmured, "Reality is subjective."

His breath hitched; she was too close, too tangible. The conscious knowledge that she was but a doll, a trick played on his mind by machines and a madman, had begun to slip further toward the back of his mind, thinning and dissolving as she slipped her delicate hand over his jaw, down to his chest, to play with a shining button. He squeezed his eye shut.

"Stop it," he whispered, but she took no heed, and instead took advantage of his proximity to place a small, lingering kiss just beneath the line of his jaw.

"It's been too long… my love," she said softly, mimicking the very terms of endearment he used for her; or rather, the woman after whom she was modelled. "I've missed you. Have you missed me too?"

He found himself laughing, a dry sob of a laugh. Had he _missed_ her? "Of course," he replied, after a pause. "Every day. Every second." He felt a rush of tears threaten, but choked them back as he reopened his eye only to see a perfect close up of her rough skin, textured by brushstrokes and paint swirls. He recoiled, pushing her away from him. "No, not you." He thought she looked hurt then. How could she? How _dare_ she? _It_? "You're not her, you're not my Cecilia. You can't trick me… I'm not like Kaiba-boy." His mouth quirked slightly into an ironic smile. "Unlike him, I know just what kind of world this little nightmare is."

She was quiet for a moment, before drawing back, shifting so that she was leaning forward with her elbows resting on her picture's frame. "Well now," she said. "You always were smarter than me. I should've known better than to try and pull the wool over your eyes. Oops!" She brought a hand to her mouth, an exaggerated expression of surprise on her heart shaped face. "I meant _eye_." He frowned, but let her continue. "If you want the truth from me, darling, I'll give it to you; I never could keep anything from you. You're not really supposed to be here. You're sort of… the loose end he had to tie up somehow. I guess now he thinks things are turning out better than he ever hoped." She giggled, apparently finding his misfortune amusing. "Hey, you want to know another secret?"

Pegasus folded his arms. "Always," he said. Her face had become more animated as she had continued to speak, her eyes bright despite their dry painted surface. In all, the effect was rather enchanting. "I've never really liked him."

He arched an eyebrow. "No? I assume you're talking about Mr. Von Schrö der?"

"He's king here," she replied, nodding. "He treats us like paper dolls, or else like guinea pigs. And he has silly hair." Pegasus couldn't stop himself from laughing then, and her eyes lighted on him, her face breaking into a smile that was just as open and bright as any of _her_ smiles. "Not like yours. You have pretty hair, you know?" She reached forward to touch his hair, gently weaving her slim fingers between the long silky strands. He lowered his eye, having become very still once more. "You always took such good care of it… Did you know you have blood in it now?"

He opened his eye, and looked at her again. She was very close. Her expression was blithe, open in its curiosity and vague concern. "Yes, I know," he said. He half-heartedly ran a hand through a lock or two, wincing at the scratchy dry feel of the blood matting, and inspecting his fingers when they came away dressed with thin slicks and flakes of red on them.

"And… here…" Cecilia rested one hand on his shoulder, using the thumb of the other to wipe at something - presumably a spatter of blood - on his cheek, moving gently down to the corner of his mouth. He wanted to move away. He knew he should take her wrist and stop her, step back, follow Kaiba, if he could. He looked up and met her eyes, and knew instantly that he had made a mistake. She held him captive, and moved forward with what seemed to be both feline speed and dreamy slowness to press her painted lips to his.

The kiss lingered longer than it should have. She was cold, and didn't feel like a living person, and wasn't _her_. Still, it was nice to indulge in an illusion for a while, however fragile. It was nice to suspend everything, every thought and worry and fear and regret, and pretend for a few short moments that he had her back and that everything was going to be okay. When at last she did pull back it was only a couple of inches, and he found himself breathless. He licked his lips, keeping his eyes closed. "I should… go after him…"

"Oh, honey," she said, and tutted in a peculiarly maternal fashion. "It's too late for that. That's what I tried to tell you."

Pegasus did look up at her then, too confused and concerned by her words to pay much attention to the inevitable cracking of the pretty illusion he had briefly spun. "What? Why is it?"

"_They_ have him now. He's probably sealed in, no escape, at least not for the time being. I wouldn't fret too much though," she cooed, seeing the look of worry on his face. "He'll be fine. He's a strong boy, and you know better than I do that he can take care of himself. And besides, I'm well acquainted with all the inhabitants of this castle, and I know that, really, they're fairly harmless."

"Who're 'they'?"

"The boys over in the chapel. They're gentlemen, really; well, the big guy and the cute little English one, certainly. The pretty redhead, now I'm not so sure about him… Well, I wouldn't worry. They'll probably just play with him a little."

Pegasus' eye widened and a look of mild panic swept onto his face. "I'm guessing you don't mean Duel Monsters," he said. "I need to get to him."

"Oh, so easily replaced am I?" she replied, placing a hand over her heart in a gesture of feigned chagrin. "For shame, he's practically a child!"

Pegasus felt his cheeks colour despite himself. "I came here to help him," he said. "And if I'm right about who these 'boys' are, then he's going to need me. Now, how about you make yourself useful and tell me the fastest way to reach this chapel; this castle is like a maze, after all."

"Ooh, I like a man who's in control," Cecilia teased. "Oh, very well then," she said when she saw he was serious. "You'll need to follow me." She stepped back from the picture's frame, taking a couple of steps away from him, and, offering him a coaxing lift of her brows, stepped to the side, out of sight, beyond the frame.

Pegasus stepped back with an expression of surprise and frustration. He glanced to the side, inspecting the pictures all along the gallery wall, searching for the blonde woman but finding them all just as static as ever. Just then Cecilia stuck her head around the left side of her frame and fixed him with a glare. "Well, are you coming?"

"Buh…?" Pegasus began, before she disappeared again in a flurry of golden hair. Tentatively, he stepped forward, and brought a hand up to touch the waxy surface of the picture she had just vacated. To his alarm, his fingertips met nothing but air. He blinked, and waved his hand, as though this would aid him in making some sense out of things. "Um… Cecilia?"

"It's a tunnel, genius," came her singsong reply from somewhere in the distance, her voice echoing dully through the tunnel's enclosed space.

"…Right." Pegasus placed his hands on the lower frame and leaned over it, peering after her. The tunnel disappeared into black shadows after a few metres each way; he assumed that it ran the length of the wall, possibly meandering off elsewhere at some point. There was no sign of Cecilia. "This place just keeps getting stranger and stranger…"

* * *

Hey-!" Seto found himself grabbed from behind, Rafael's strong hands twisting his arms behind his back and fastening his wrists together before he even had the chance to realise what was happening. He didn't see the blond glance down at something - the Rod - and frown, then shrug, just slightly. "What the fuck is this?" Seto hissed, glaring over his shoulder and preparing to kick out at his attacker. Rafael merely stepped back, his face expressionless, and Seto's attention was directed forcibly back towards Alister when the boy took Kaiba's jaw in his hand and twisted his head back around. 

"Eyes front, Mr. Kaiba," he said, that sharp voice already grating on Seto's nerves.

"I have to obey you now?" Seto said slowly, sarcastically. "I'm sorry, but that's just going one step too far. I'll play along for a while, but that just caps it."

Alister's face darkened, and he grasped the lapels of Seto's coat and yanked him forward, forcing him to his knees. "You could call us your gaolers," he said. "You're booked to stay here for quite a while, so you may as well get comfy."

"Alister," Seto growled, his tone warning.

"And don't think about trying to run away," Alister continued. "Like any good prison, this one has locks…" He closed his eyes for a second, and a circle of green light flashed upon his forehead, spinning and shaping itself into a pointed sigil, surrounded by a thin circle. The light was faint, but it radiated out, until Seto could discern a vague green tinge to the air in the whole room. "And, of course, guards." He passed one hand over his bony hip, indicating none-too-subtly the compact little handgun nestled in a holster at his belt. "You really should have known," the boy said, furling his wiry body until he crouched at Seto's side. "The seal keeps those doors locked. There's no escape when I have it in place. You'll notice it's all around this room," he added, motioning with one slender arm towards the altar, the pillars, even the polished floor. The angles of that arcane symbol were echoed everywhere: etched into the stone pillars just above eye level, inlaid in a lighter wood into the ends of the pews, incorporated into a more complex design carved onto the side of the altar. Seto grit his teeth, noting again the greenish glow that permeated the space, lending the smoke from the incense a cartoon-style gruesomeness.

"So what do you want?" Seto growled. He wondered why Valon and Rafael were doing nothing. "Because if this is about your brother again, I am going to hurt you. Really, my heart bleeds for you, but get. Over. It."

Alister's smooth face contorted into a mask of stunted fury. "You never did show respect for anyone but yourself," he bit out. His hand shot toward Seto and buried its fingers in Kaiba's hair, grabbing at back of his head and tilting it roughly back, so that Seto teetered at an uncomfortable angle, his hands kept behind his back thanks to Rafael's thorough knots. "And no, I'm not here to rehash that old fight… How is your brother, by the way?"

Seto's eyes narrowed immediately. "What have you done with Mokuba?" he hissed.

"Nothing, nothing," Alister replied flippantly. "Always so quick to accuse, aren't you?"  
"I thought that was your job."

"Yes, well. At least my accusations are founded."

Seto snorted. "Hardly," he spat. "So what is it this time? He offered you me to do what you wanted with, and in return you… What? It can't be worse than what that Dartz crackpot had cooked up. Where is he anyway? I half expected to see the whole merry bunch somewhere around here."

Alister laughed softly, cruelly, and tilted Seto's head further back until he was barely balanced. Alister leaned over him, grey eyes having acquired an accent of green. "He's not here," he said.

"And the plan?"

"Yeah," Alister replied, and the simplicity of his answer made Seto glare at him, betraying his unease. "Something like that."

"What?"

"You're mine to do what I want with."

Seto quickly cast his eyes about the chapel; Rafael and Valon seemed to have disappeared, presumably having found some invisible hidey-hole or secret passage, thus leaving Alister to his own devices. This was both ominous and a relief; the latter because he now only had the slight Alister to deal with, who shouldn't be too much of a challenge even with his dumb magic tricks. He shifted in his bonds, meeting Alister's eyes with a gaze as icy as he could muster, and then felt something that filled him with a cold kind of optimism. It was the chill edge of the Rod, one of the curved blades protruding from the orb on the top. He had forgotten that he had slipped the relic into his belt following the whole fiasco with Bakura and Malik. He was glad now that he had done so, since it put those small blades (dull compared to the Rod's point, but he wouldn't complain) within easy reach of the thin ropes that bound him.

Alister brought his other hand to Seto's cheek, the fabric of his glove warm against Seto's skin. Seto grit his teeth and fought to remain calm, having to work at the ropes without attracting Alister's attention.

"And… what is that?" Seto began to say, trying to keep Alister's attention on him, and not on his attempts to free himself.

Alister leaned closer, so that his face was barely a breath's from Seto's, and murmured, "What I've been wanting to do for a long time…" He pressed his lips to Seto's; he hardly took Seto off guard, but the brunet still widened his eyes and tried to flinch away. Alister tightened his hand in Seto's hair, twisting until the roots hurt, and brought his other hand to Seto's collarbone, sliding roughly down over his chest. His movements far from gentle, he forced Seto's lips apart, worming his tongue into the other teen's mouth, crushing their lips together. Seto forced his eyes closed, concentrating on the fraying ropes that held him, simultaneously submitting to Alister (for the moment) and letting him kiss him ever deeper, his free hand roaming seemingly everywhere, pulling up his shirt and slipping underneath. He was almost free… there! The ropes binding his wrists together snapped apart, still encircling his bony wrists like bracelets but separate, at least. He inwardly smirked, then bit down on Alister's lower lip, drawing blood. The redhead yelped and pulled back, and Seto used this opportunity to push him violently away, in the same movement reaching for Alister's belt and grabbing the gun he kept there. With his usual fluidity of motion he rose to his feet, clicking off the safety and aiming the gun, with one hand, at Alister's head. Alister looked up at him with a blank, dumbfounded expression, before letting his features twist into a snarl.

"Now what?" he said. "You're going to shoot me?"

Seto tilted his head to the side for a moment, gave a half shrug, and replied, "That's a waste of ammo." Then, quicker than Alister could register, he moved forward and brought the butt of the weapon down on the side of Alister's head, knocking him clean out. His lithe body slumped to the floor, and from somewhere ahead, in the gloom behind the altar, Seto heard a slow clapping.

He glanced in that direction, keeping his newly acquired firearm ready. "You want to go next?"

"Nah, I'll pass," said Valon, strolling out of the shadows. There was a small smile on his face. He nodded toward Alister's prone form. "He's gonna be pissed off when he wakes up."

"Yeah? Well that's your problem, not mine," Seto answered. "Where's the other one?"

"Rafael?" Valon glanced over his shoulder; Seto followed the movement, and with a narrowing of his eyes he was able to discern Rafael's hulking form leaning against the back wall, arms folded, apparently uninterested in the unfolding situation. "He's not one for violence, really," Valon explained. He began to walk towards Seto, spreading his arms to the sides. "So, why don't we at least make it look official?"

"What?"

"I'm not meant to let you leave."

"You're going to kill me instead?" He raised his gun. "Because if that's the case, then I'm sorry to tell you that you'll end up with a bullet in your skull."

Valon let out a long whistling breath, studying the stolen weapon with an uninterested look in his blue-grey eyes. "I've got one just like that," he said. He gestured with one thumb toward Rafael. "And he's got two. You really think you're gonna fight your way out? Reality check, mate."

"What's my alternative?"

"You could always, oh I dunno…" He rolled his eyes. "Ask nicely?"

"What happened to not letting me leave?"

"Ah. I said I wasn't _meant_ to let you leave." From the gloom at the back of the chapel, Seto thought he heard Rafael chuckle softly. "You could always fight your way out, the old fashioned way. No need for a bloody _gun battle."_

Slowly, Seto lowered his weapon and slipped it into his belt, at his hip this time. "So let me get this straight: you're letting me go, just so long as it looks like I fought my way out?" His tone was even, but incredulous.

Valon shrugged. "I've got better things to do than baby sit his little obsession," he replied. "So what's it gonna be?"

Instead of replying, Seto strode forward and, without pausing, swung a right hook into Valon's jaw. The boy's head snapped to the side, and he slowly brought one gloved hand to his now bruised cheek. He was silent for a moment, then spat blood onto the chapel floor. "Jesus, mate, you didn't have to make it _that_ convincing." He flashed Seto a ragged grin. "Sod off, then. The seal should be broken, what with sleeping beauty out cold over there."

Seto glanced from Valon to Rafael, who shrugged. "We won't stop you." He gestured toward a small door in the chapel's rear corner. "That door leads you onward."

Seto paused only a moment, glancing from one swordsman to the other, and then briefly back to the sleeping Alister. Yet another place in this castle that he was only too happy to leave.

"Thanks," he said sarcastically, and moved toward the door.

* * *


	12. Eleven: Reverse of Reverse

_They crush your heart  
But spare your feet  
Like judging people  
You've yet to meet  
Well time is running fast  
Upon your reflection.  
Trust me now…_

Zeromancer - 'Houses of Cards'

* * *

No sooner had Seto stepped out into the narrow arched hallway than he heard the faint, distorted sound of music. It was distant, and it was only with great concentration that he could discern the melody, or indeed anything beyond the general noise - that quiet, haunting wail.

"Now what?" he muttered, and moved onward, following, somewhat naively, the aural trail laid out for him. It led him down one dark corridor after another, the myriad junctions and turns leaving him thoroughly disoriented. At length his route opened into a wider space, and he found himself in a spacious, echoing room. A room which he recognised. "The entrance hall?" he murmured, his tone betraying his disbelief. How could he have returned to the start, after all the ground he had covered?

One glance toward the main door told him once again that all was not as it first appeared; the wall was blank, as though there had never been a door there at all.

Turning instead to the broad staircase, Seto discerned that the music was coming from the floor above, where, leading off from the wide landing, another set of gilded doors stood ajar. After ascending with uncharacteristic slowness, Seto first regarded the doors with sharp curiosity, then raised one hand, intending to push one door open but instead finding himself sliding his fingertips over the smooth, cold surface.

The doors themselves were works of art. He had paid little attention to such things the last time he had visited the island; he had, after all, had more pressing matters to attend to. However, now he studied them closely; the gold wasn't brassy, but muted and matte. The central winged horse was lifelike in its rendering, and the veins of the nose, the fine hairs of the mane, and the individual spines of its feathers were all lovingly crafted. Surrounding it was a perplexing frieze of tangled bramble thickets, spiked limbs coiling over one another like broken bones, seeming to tighten and creak like snakes as he looked at them. Here and there golden flowers bloomed coldly, and Seto could not shake the feeling that, were they real, they would be coated in blood. Beneath the barbed-wire thorns, as though fenced in, were angular figures, small enough for Seto to have to lean closer in order to see them clearly. They stood amongst symbols, hieroglyphs Seto recognised, but could not understand.

He stepped back abruptly.

It was the Egyptian tablet from the museum. True, it was obscured and 'enhanced' by the horse, thorns, and flowers, but the design, those ancient characters and the blocky representations of Yugi and… Not himself. Definitely not himself… They were recognisable.

Suddenly the doors were swung open from the other side, and a startled Seto was faced with a wall of doll-like figures, decked out in ball gowns and with their faces powdered porcelain.

"He's here," one said.

"Dance with me," said another.

"Dance with _me_," said another, and took Seto by the arm, pulling him forcefully over the threshold. Before he could respond, Seto was wheeled into dizzy waltz, with which he had no choice but to keep up.

He was whisked from one partner to the next, their elegant hands grabbing at his arms and coat, his feet tripping as the blank-faced women pulled him into turns and spins that made him dizzy. Their eyes stared without seeing, and their lithe bodies (each one dressed in a gown of foil and brocade, jewels and paste and broken glass) moved with an easy yet emotionless grace.

As he was pulled to and fro, he tried to take in the room in which he now found himself. It was a vast ballroom, with smooth mirrored walls and a gilded ceiling, illuminated by sparkling chandeliers. A combination of their multi-faceted crystals, dancing candle flames, and the mirrors and movement of the room resulted in the light spinning in crazed, dazzling angles, dreamlike and surreal.

Once again he was whirled around to face a new partner, though when he saw this new face he gave a gasp of surprise. Pegasus flashed him a devious grin, then brought a finger to his lips. "Shh."

"Pegasus?" Seto faltered, his steps slowing, but Pegasus pulled a face and gesticulated urgently for him to be silent and keep moving.

"Keep it down," he hissed, his tone furtive.

Kaiba frowned, and grudgingly allowed himself to be led as the taller man pulled him along in a clumsy waltz, only just keeping step with the other dancers and moving in circles toward the edge of the floor. Glancing past Pegasus' shoulder Seto thought he caught a glimpse of a familiar figure in red, the eyes watching him alone; shivering in spite of himself he quickly looked away. When he raised his eyes again the face was gone, only to be replaced by a horde of unknowns, spiralling in time to the warped, straining wail of violins. Pegasus stopped suddenly, performed a complex set of steps in unison with the other dancers, which Seto struggled to keep up with, before changing direction and dragging Kaiba with him. "Just keep dancing for a while, will you? Pretend there's nothing strange."

Seto almost burst out laughing. "Nothing strange? I'll pretend that I'm not trapped in some kind of twisted living nightmare, dancing with _you _then, shall I?"

"Yes, that should be all right," Pegasus replied vaguely, his gaze focused on something behind Seto.

"I don't know which is worse," Seto muttered under his breath.

"Just keep dancing," Pegasus repeated, fixing Seto with an urgent stare. "We don't have long, and I'm not meant to be here. It's only with _her_ help that I found you again at all…" Kaiba frowned. This was not what he'd expected; up until now, everyone he'd met had seemed relaxed and perfectly happy to be a part of this fucked up maze of a tournament, yet when he had finally met the man he had thought was behind it, Pegasus had seemed twitchy, anxious even. He was even worse now, and he kept glancing from side to side, his step unnecessarily brisk.

"What are you blathering on about this time?" Seto played a familiar card. "Wasn't this meant to be your 'big comeback tournament'?"

Pegasus looked up at him in mild shock, some of the colour draining from his cheeks. "It was," he said. "But as I tried to tell you before, something _awful_ has- Ah!" His eye widened as he caught sight of something behind Seto, but when Kaiba tried to turn to look the older man gave his hand a painful squeeze and hissed, "Don't look."

There was definitely something wrong with this "tournament", that one Seto would agree on, and it was clearly something more than Pegasus' usual childish games and half-baked schemes.

"We need to get off this dance floor for a minute…" Pegasus murmured, though Seto guessed that he did not have the older man's full attention. "Now. Come on," Pegasus continued, and tried to pull Seto toward the door.

"Now wait a second," Seto argued, twisting his hand free and stopping still, even as the doll-faced figures circled around Pegasus and himself. "I'm not going anywhere with you, not again. Not until you explain this properly."

"God damn it, Kaiba!" Pegasus replied, fighting hard to keep his voice down. "Why can't you just -"

"Just what?" said Siegfried. Seto and Pegasus wheeled in the direction of his voice to find him standing only two feet away from them, smiling blithely. Pegasus gasped and stilled, clearly afraid of the other man, though exactly why Seto had no idea, and nor did he particularly care. He was more concerned with the knowledge that the last time he and Siegfried had met, Siegfried had tried to have him beheaded.

"You bastard," he snarled, and moved forward, drawing Alister's gun from his belt. Before he could raise it and shoot, however, three of Siegfried's valkyries were upon him, appearing out of the assembled crowd and gripping his arms and shoulders with inhuman strength. He struggled and fired, but one of his assailants wrenched his arm up so that the three shots went wide of their target. The dancers had come to a stop, forming a clearing around them., and the music had ceased, resulting in an eerie silence.

"Kaiba!" he heard Pegasus cry, and, turning, he saw the older man restrained also, this time by two other familiar characters: the dark Bakura, and Malik's sadistic alter. The dark Malik had one hand in his prisoner's hair and was using it to hold Pegasus' head back at a painful angle, while Bakura held a knife to his captive's throat. The pair of them looked all too happy to be thus employed, and the smirk on Malik's face as he leaned close to Pegasus' cheek was enough to make Seto's stomach turn.

"Well, well, now," Siegfried said, circling Seto with a bounce in his step. "Isn't this such a pleasant scene?"

"Fuck you, Siegfried," Seto spat, once again attempting to free himself from the warriors' steel grip.

"Now, now, Herr Kaiba," Siegfried scolded. He was but feet away from Seto now, and regarded the brunet with disdain. "Let's not stoop to using such base language." He moved forward, bringing one elegant hand to Seto's cheek, softly running the knuckles over his captive's skin before sneering and taking a bunch of Seto's hair in hand. Kaiba growled, reminded all too much of the incident with Alister only minutes earlier. However, Siegfried did not try to kiss him. Instead, he leaned close, fixing Seto with look like iron and hissing, "You should be happy, Herr Kaiba. This is your very own fairytale. A happy ending awaits." He straightened then, releasing Seto's hair, and smiled cruelly.

Seto let out a short, barking laugh. "Sorry," he said. "But I've never been one to wait for some handsome prince to come rescue me."

Siegfried tutted and wagged his finger in mock disapproval, lowering his eyes. "I wouldn't sneer at happy endings if I were you. After all, you know what happens to the villains of these stories."

"You mean you?" Seto interjected with a contemptuous quirk of his lips.

"Now, now, let's not be nasty," Siegfried replied. "I'm no villain. If it's a villain you want, why not look over there?" He gestured with a sweeping movement toward Pegasus, who coloured, then twisted in his captors' hold. "There is a villain who manipulates and extorts others, who does not care who he hurts so that he can get his way. Or better yet! …why not look right here?" He turned back to Seto and set his hands on his hips. "Yes, Herr Kaiba. You are the villain of this piece."

"You're fucking insane," was all Seto could say in response, marvelling at the deranged logic Siegfried was using. "This isn't some kind of stupid fairytale," he went on. "It's real life."

"Ah, ah," Siegfried interrupted. The smile on his face was gleeful. "You haven't been paying attention. This is no tournament. There are no star chips, no rare cards, and no life points. There will be no victory for you, and no escape." he laughed. "This will be your final prison."

"…What are you talking about?"

"Tell me… How do you like your thieving ways now? You are condemned, Kaiba. You have been tried and found guilty."

"Tried?"

Siegfried did not explain, and instead said, "Let them go."

"But sir," one of the valkyries protested, but Siegfried held up a hand to silence her.

"They have nowhere to run to, and there is nothing they can do. Let them go."

Reluctantly, the valkyries relinquished their hold on Seto, and he stood warily, watching Siegfried's every movement, Alister's gun heavy and sure in his hand. After a hard glance from Siegfried, Malik and Bakura released Pegasus, who breathed deeply once Bakura's blade was removed from his throat. He brought a hand to his neck, instinctively, and slumped his shoulders.

Siegfried extended one slender hand and spoke to Seto with a tone calmer than moments before, "Give me that gun, Kaiba."

"Seto," Pegasus croaked, though Kaiba barely spared him a glance before returning his gaze to Siegfried. He could shoot him right there. Just shoot him in the head, right between the eyes, and that would be that. His hand tightened on the grip, his index finger finding the trigger.

"Now, Herr Kaiba," Siegfried cooed. His face had softened, and his head was tilted to one side. "What will you do? I don't want you dead yet, but these ladies will have no problems running you through in an instant if necessary." As if to illustrate his point, the three valkyries drew themselves up, their hands shifting to where their swords hung from their belts.

Seto hesitated, narrowed his eyes, and glared.

"Fuck it." He sneered and raised the gun, aimed for Siegfried's head at point blank range, and squeezed the trigger.

Siegfried's eyes widened in that briefest of instants before the bullet hit. It formed a neat red hole in his forehead, while the back of his head exploded into mist.

The valkyries moved with impossible speed, two drawing their weapons while the third (Seto recognised Brunhilde) sank to Siegfried's side as his body reeled and fell. He heard Pegasus shout his name as both women raised their swords to strike, and then Pegasus was near him again, grabbing his coat and wrenching him out of the path of their blades with a speed borne of panic. The crowd of dancers became animated again, jostling and crowing, reaching for both men as they shoved their way through. Seto kept a tight hold on the gun, reluctant to use it again on account of having no spare ammunition, but prepared to fire if he needed to.

"Stop them!" Brunhilde's voice boomed over the crowd, and Seto, his wrist gripped firmly by Pegasus, allowed himself to be led through the mass of hands and mad, staring eyes; the dancers seemed to have grown teeth, and one latched onto his arm with her fine needle fangs. He shook her off violently and continued, and the next thing he knew was against the wall where the door should have been, with just the seamless mirror reflecting his own wide eyes back at him.

"What?" Pegasus was saying. "No!" He struck the mirrored wall in desperation, and as the crowd pressed down on them, long fingers catching, teeth snapping, Seto found himself pushed roughly into the glass wall.

There was an instant when the room seemed to freeze for a moment, then flicker, and then he heard the brittle sound of the mirror breaking under the impact of his body. He was falling, falling through the glass, and he felt Pegasus' hand slip from his wrist as they both began to tumble into the impossible void beyond the silver glass.

* * *

He landed on a hard, smooth floor, wincing at the pain before swiftly springing to his feet. Looking up, he could see only darkness; he didn't know how far he had fallen, but it had felt like it had been only seconds. He looked about him for any sign of Pegasus, but as far as he could tell he was alone.

Then, out of the shadow, came a voice that should have been silenced forever.

"Welcome, Kaiba," it said gleefully, "to a world of your imagination."

Seto wheeled around, gun clutched tightly in his hand. "Where are you, you snake?" he demanded, eyes narrowing as he glared into the shadows. His question was met with glittering laughter, seeming to echo all around him at once. His eyes darted to and fro, and he gripped the gun with both hands until his knuckles turned white. Straight ahead, he thought he saw something move, a blurry shade of a silhouette and ribbon-like hair. He raised his gun and fired. The shot cracked with startling volume but the bullet was swallowed by the darkness. "Unfortunately for you," the all-too-familiar voice returned. Seto grit his teeth. "I also have some degree of control in this place."

Seto felt a warm wind ripple over him, and at once the gun that had been such a reassuring presence in his hands was gone and he was left clutching at empty air. Another laugh, the echo of a soft touch at his cheek, and then the darkness exploded into a symphony of black, white, and red. He was falling backwards again, and that same laughter filled his ears as he descended, helpless and silent, amid a flurry of cards.


	13. Twelve: The Looking Glass House

At the end of the road you will find the answer  
At the end of the road you will drink abyss

The Distillers - 'Hall of Mirrors'

* * *

When Seto opened his eyes, it was to a light grey fog; thicker than mist and somehow grainy. He blinked several times, then pulled himself into a sitting position and pushed his hair back from his face. He could see nothing around him but that eerie fog, and the only sounds were the rustle of his clothing, and his own slow breathing. His movements tentative, he rose to his feet, glancing around him again in the hopes of catching sight of some sign of life. 

"Hello?" he tried, and immediately felt inexplicably guilty for breaking the silence. He was met with only silence, though, and after a moment he began to walk. His steps were slow at first, as he could not see the ground beneath him, though after a few strides he decided that he would not fall, and increased his pace.

After several paces in one direction he experienced an unpleasant and painful shock: he had walked into something solid, an invisible wall. He recoiled, swearing and clutching his nose, and wafted his hand before his face to clear some of the mist. As it dispersed - briefly - he caught sight of a blurred face beneath the pale grey murk. Frowning, he leaned in closer; the picture was distorted, but even through the thick soup of fog he could recognise his own face reflected back at him.

"Fairground tricks," he muttered, and turned away. His mind felt as fuzzy as his vision, and it was only now that full memories of the events in the ballroom filtered into his mind. He remembered being dragged around, finding Pegasus again, and then Siegfried. What was it they had said? Pegasus had been agitated, and Siegfried had delivered one of his monologues; the details escaped him now, but he recalled something about fairy tales and villains. Well, he had always known that the guy was a few cards short of a full deck. And as for Pegasus… well. Kaiba was beginning to believe, however grudgingly, that the man might be telling the truth.

He seemed to have gone missing again, though. Seto did not know how far he had fallen when the ballroom mirror broke, but he did know that they had fallen together. However, no matter where he looked he could see no one.

"Pegasus?" he said. "If you're here, quit messing around." He waited a few moments, gazed upwards into the mist which extended out of view, and was satisfied that Pegasus was not there. "Guess I'll see you later then," he sighed; he knew he'd run into the older man again. They seemed to be taking different paths through this strange isolated world, but paths which kept intersecting.

He walked on. His gun was gone, but the cool metal of the Rod at his back was reassuring in such an uncertain and unfamiliar environment; he would not have liked to have been completely unarmed.

Minutes (that felt like hours) later, Seto came up against another mirror wall. This one was much clearer, and Seto eyed it suspiciously for a moment. It was like staring at a doppelganger of himself. He turned once again, sighing. This was growing tiresome. Just then, almost blurring into the lighter fog around it, he spied an outline, a silhouette in darker grey.

"Who's there?" he shot, eyeing the figure with a hard, cautious gaze.

It turned, moved towards him, and he saw that it was female, and a woman he recognised.

"Isis?"

The woman met his eyes; half her face was covered by a linen cloth, but her skin was a rich tan, her eyes rimmed thickly in kohl. She regarded him in silence for a moment, before addressing him in a measured tone.

"Seto Kaiba," she said. "You are late."

Seto raised an eyebrow. "I thought there was no time in this place."

Isis shrugged, an elegant, sinewy movement. She then reached up to lower the veil from her face. "Not in here, but out there." She motioned with one slender arm, indicating the expanse of mist, the distorting mirrors, the great grey nothingness.

"Out there? You mean, outside this castle? I assume I am still in the castle… Actually," he paused, remembering all that had happened, and all that Pegasus and Siegfried had told him. "I'm not even sure _where _I am anymore."

Isis' inscrutable face softened a little. "You are nowhere," she said. "But that does not alter the fact that you are late. You must hurry."

"You know," Seto said slowly, placing his hands upon his narrow hips. "This would be a hell of a lot easier if you started making sense. Why is it no one around here talks like a normal person?"

"I am making perfect sense," Isis replied icily. "You are simply not paying attention."

Seto sighed and threw up his hands. "All right, fine, fine! I'm all ears now; what can you tell me that's actually useful?"

Isis folded her arms and leaned her weight on one foot. "Firstly, that you should not believe everything you see or hear here. This is not the world you know; many of us here have no idea, while others, including myself, know everything. This world is… virtual, I believe you would say."

"I'm in a VR?" Seto said. "That explains a lot… Why couldn't someone just say?" He scowled. "And with Pegasus rambling on about illusions and god knows what else…"

"Pay attention," Isis interrupted. Instinctively, Seto obeyed. "Secondly, you must believe some of what you see or hear here. You are not alone in this maze, and while some would wish you die here, others would rather help."

"Which are you?"

Isis tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows, just slightly. "Which do you think?"

"…Whatever," Seto muttered.

"As I was saying," Isis continued. "You are not alone."

Seto hesitated for a moment, then asked, "What about Pegasus?"

Isis only smiled a small, cryptic smile. "You have not been paying attention."

Seto rolled his eyes. "Whatever. How do I get out of here?"

"Keep walking. That way," Isis pointed behind her with one outstretched arm, keeping her eyes fixed on Seto's. "Pay no attention to the reflections; they are just that. If you want to escape, you should find him; you'll have a better chance together."

"Great," Seto muttered, and began to trudge in the direction Isis had indicated.

"Hurry," she said.

"All right, I'm going," Seto snapped, and quickened his stride.

* * *

"What do you think we should do with him?" 

Pegasus came round slowly, becoming first aware of a musty, rotten smell, and second of the clanking, rattling sound of metal. He opened his eyes, though the lids were heavy, to the light grey of a stone ceiling, far above him. He blinked a few times, and the festoons of cobwebs came into clearer focus.

"Oh, he's waking up."

He groaned as he tried to move, but found his arms swiftly pinned down to the hard floor by a strong pair of hands. Looking round in alarm to see his captor, he drew a hissed breath and tried to pull away. Bakura only smiled coldly, then looked to his companion. "Well?" he said, somehow managing to make that single word sound like a freshly sharpened knife's edge.

Malik was perched on a marble counter - one quick look around the rest of his surroundings told Pegasus that he must be in the castle's kitchens - swinging his long legs and swaying slightly. At his side was arranged a little kit of utensils, some gleaming, clean steel, some rusted over with age.

"This one's the spare, right?" he said. His usually harsh voice was softer, more playful that normal. Bakura nodded; the tip of one canine was just visible beneath his lip. "I have an idea," Malik said, and grinned. "Do you still have it?"

Bakura tilted his head for a moment, before replying, "I do."

Pegasus struggled against the thief's bony hands, but the spirit was remarkably strong. Bakura looked down at his bedraggled, tired prisoner, and moved to straddle his chest, thus holding him even more securely. He glanced up at the large, grease-smeared clock, its spindly hands indicating that it was almost four. "'Tis brillig," he said with an oily smile. "Time to start dinner."

Malik laughed, stood up and danced between counters and ranges, like an indecisive child, singing gleefully. "Rabbit pie and eyeball soup...!" He sashayed back to the countertop, and then took his time selecting a long steel carving knife. It's blade was nearly eight inches long and serrated, and had a handle made of carved bone. Upon seeing it held so casually in the tomb-keeper's agile fingers, Pegasus suddenly felt very cold. "Better than Snark meat, hmm?" The knife glinted in the sunlight, which filtered into the large room through a fine film of grime upon the high windows.

"A much fuller flavour, at least," Bakura said. "And a much more satisfying catch."

* * *

The mirrors seemed to close in on him the further he went. Time and again he would come up short, startled by his own reflection rushing to meet him, emerging from behind the mist. He grit his teeth, turning once more, feeling like he was being herded, guided, forced in one direction. His path narrowed, the glass walls contracting in on him, their crystalline faces and angles throwing his image forth in all directions and leaving him disoriented. There were so many duplicates, all somehow distorted or disfigured, all obscured in part by the mist, that it was becoming difficult to remember which was the real him. Looking up, he saw that there was no longer an unending void of fog above him, but simply more mirrors. Staring into his own eyes, suspended upside down above his head, he felt a sudden wave of vertigo and threw out his arms to steady himself. His hands met cold glass, and he closed his eyes for a moment while he regained his balance and composure. Slowly he opened his eyes again. 

"Pay no attention to the reflections," he murmured, as Isis' calm words drifted into his mind.

"They are only that," said his voice, but not from his mouth. His eyes widened, and he spun around, finding only more reflections behind him. Eyes narrowing in suspicion, he scanned the planes of the mirror walls; the reflected images mimicked his glare, except for one. He gave a start when he realised it was looking straight at him, and not away, like the others. The reflection stared at him, then threw its head back and laughed.

Disconcerted, Seto backed away, before turning and striding hurriedly in the direction in which he had been headed.

"If you want to escape," his voice chorused, each reflection speaking in unison with the others. The passage twisted and turned around itself, a maze of mirrors. Seto moved faster, and the voices laughed, "you should find him. You'll have a better chance." Up ahead he thought he saw a door, set into the glass, its edge only a thin black line in the mirror. He skidded to a halt before it, and the reflection in its surface smirked at him languorously.

"You'll have a better chance," it said. "Together." Seto glared at the doppelganger's serene face while scrabbling for a door handle. "Though you know it's still really no chance at all."

The handle was smooth under his hand, and Seto wrenched the door open and tumbled through.

* * *


	14. Thirteen: Tiger Lily

Something crunched under his feet. He had crossed the threshold with his eyes involuntarily closed, and he opened them now and looked down. The pale mist still twirled in improbable spirals, though appeared thinner, more like steam than fog; the ground beneath him was of stone slabs, and he saw that the object he had crushed under the sole of his boot was a dried, dead leaf. Frowning, Seto looked up and squinted into the coiling vapours. The air was hot and humid, and he felt the strain of it on his lungs. He wafted his hand before his face, and as the mist cleared he could make out variegated leaves and twisting vines. He blinked a few times, enough to be able to see clearly; the space he occupied was small, cramped by the lush foliage which crowded in around him on all sides. Straight ahead the narrow path curved away, and was lost in greenery.

"Am I in a castle or a jungle?" Seto mused, and moved forward, pushing the leafy vines out of the way as he went. A flower brushed his cheek, and its silky pink petals left a warm residue of moisture on his skin. He wrinkled his nose and wiped the due from his face, moving more cautiously; the path became ever narrower, so overgrown was it with vines, grasses, and small flowers that poked through the ragged cracks between the flags. Twigs caught at his coat and hair, and big clinging blooms seemed to reach out for him, caressing his cheeks and hands with silky, moist petals. A thorn caught his skin beneath his left eye, scratching an angry, thin line of red that Seto didn't notice until blood already crept down his cheek in a slow, wet ooze. He cursed softly, and continued, pushing fronds of fern and pampas out of the way to reveal a small clearing. The light was dappled and constantly moving, filtered down to him from the glass roof through a meshwork of branches, vines, and leaves overhead; a glass roof - so he was in a greenhouse? The air was close and warm, and he felt his eyelids droop as he inhaled a heavy floral scent that made his head swim.

"You look lost, honey." Eyes narrowing, Seto cast a sharp look to either side. "Up here," the soft voice said, the slow accent familiar. Seto tried to place it, wondering who the next character in the line of familiar faces would be.

Looking up, he did not see anyone at first, until the figures began to move. Their clothing and hair had made them appear to be part of the brilliant floral display around them, and even their skin glistened with a light dew. The one who had spoken leaned forward and offered Seto a coquettish smile. Waves of yellow hair tumbled around her face and over her pale shoulders as she moved, and she winked one heavy-lashed violet eye in greeting.

"Mai Valentine?" Seto said, his tone betraying a mite of scepticism.

"The one and only," the woman replied with a shrug. Seto moved his attention from her to the others, who he now recognised, despite the otherworldly appearance afforded by the glittering make-up, opulent drapes of clothing, and the flowers in their hair. A frail looking girl with pink roses in her light brown hair, and wide, blank, hazel eyes: Serenity Wheeler, Joey's baby sister. A doll-like girl with violets in her platinum hair, and deep indigo eyes: Miho Nosaka, who Seto vaguely remembered from Domino High, maybe three years ago now. And on Mai's immediate right-

"Téa?" Téa Gardner, Mutou and Wheeler's number one cheerleader, eyes wide and painted with sparkling blue and yellow, a delicate wreath of daisies encircling her head. Téa merely lowered her eyes, smiling demurely.

"Nice to see you, Kaiba," she said, and gave a little wave. There was a faint creaking noise, and Seto glanced down to see fresh green vines coiling amongst the dry, dead grasses and leaves that littered the path. He looked up again, glaring at each woman in turn.

"So you're the next in line in this little freak-show," he said. "What, is he just rolling out everyone I've ever met?"

Serenity turned her face to him, though her eyes remained unfocused. "You're so rude," she said quietly, frowning.

"What say we teach him some manners?" Mai suggested, reclining against the trunk of a tree that should have been far too big to fit inside a greenhouse. "Huh, girls?"

Seto gasped as one green tendril wound its way around his ankle; he glanced down at it, wide eyed, only to feel another coil round his right wrist and pull his arm back. "Hey, what the… What is this?" Seto cried as many green tendrils wrapped themselves around his torso and limbs, viscous sap coating his clothing and seeping through to his skin.

"We're just having a little fun, sugar," Mai cooed.

"Don't worry, Kaiba," Téa said. Her azure eyes had darkened to a deep, cloudy sapphire, and she was leaning forward. "We won't hurt you."

"Speak for yourself," Mai said quietly, with a shrug of her elegant shoulders. Serenity tutted softly and shook her head.

"Look at him, so weak," she said, her girlish voice almost lost beneath the rustle of stems and leaves, and the hissing murmur of the vines twisting and tightening around Seto's body. He grit his teeth, attempting to force his arm back, trying to reach the Rod tucked securely in his belt.

"He'll never make it out alive, will he?" Miho chimed in. She moved forward, twining one slender arm around Téa's waist and resting her head against the brunette's pale shoulder.

Téa shook her head, smiling. "No. Not alone; and he's always going to be alone."

Mai tilted her head to the side, a coy little smirk on her painted lips. "So, if we keep him a little longer, who's going to know?"

"We can't…" Té a said, biting her knuckle as one of the slim vines worked its way under Seto's shirt and tightened around his waist; the plant's sap was warm and damp against his skin, and he shuddered in disgust. "Can we?"

Eyes widening in alarm, Seto wrenched his arm partially loose of its bindings and swiftly moved for a weapon.

"Yes," he hissed, finally hooking his fingers round the Rod's slender handle, the cool metal against his skin once again a blessed sensation. He pulled it from his belt quickly, and lost no time in slicing the fibrous vines that held his other arm. He then pried at the tendril encircling his waist, using the Rod's point as leverage. Above him, Mai sighed.

"Oh, fine," she said. Seto paused only a moment to look up. "If you don't want to play…" The vines suddenly went slack, and Seto stepped hastily out of their reach, still holding the Rod like a talisman, its blades dripping with pale sap.

"All we really wanted was to tell you…"said Miho.

"That someone was looking for you," finished Té a.

Warily, Seto cocked his head and asked, "Someone?" Could Pegasus have caught up with him already? He couldn't help the surge of relief he felt at the thought. Mai tapped the side of her nose.

"Now, now, that would be telling'," she said.

"You'll know him when you find him," Serenity offered.

"I'm sure I will," Seto said, almost under his breath. Then, not wanting to stay any longer within the airless confines of the glasshouse, he turned on his heel and began to follow the narrow path out of the clearing, into another thicket of fern and flowers.

"He thinks it's nearly over," Serenity said after a pause, when she was sure Seto was out of earshot.

"I know," Mai said with a chuckle, inspecting her indigo painted nails. "It's really kind of sweet."

Téa was twisting her slender fingers together, a light frown creasing her brow. "Do you think we should have warned him?"

Miho shook her head, letting her pale hair sway in its ponytail. "What difference would it make?" she said.

Serenity nodded, half closing her blind eyes. "No difference at all," she said, in the tone of one who knew. "The ending is always the same."

* * *

"Hold it point down. Don't cut too far. We wouldn't want to kill him by accident, now would we?"

* * *

Feeling light headed from the close, humid air of the glasshouse, Seto stumbled as he reached the exit. The door rattled as he swung it open, its aged hinges rusted over, the white paint of its wooden frame flaked and sharp, tendrils of green snaking their way over the cracked panes. Seto pushed it open violently and lurched outside, instantly grateful for the rush of cooler air that greeted him. His feet once again on spongy grass rather than cracked slabs, he let himself fall forward onto his knees, then onto all fours, breathing heavily. 

Eventually, when he had caught his breath, he raised his head. He was kneeling on a gentle grassy slope with the glasshouse (it looked smaller on the outside) behind him, and the castle encircling the vast area on all sides. He could see, now that he took the time to look, that the building was much larger than Pegasus' Duellist Kingdom lair; that was something he should have noticed before, before it became undeniably clear that he was in a VR world. He cursed himself for having overlooked it.

The sunlight felt warm on his face, and he closed his eyes for a moment. It was a rare instant of calm, before he remembered why he was there, and remembered the importance of finding his way out as soon as possible.

"Final prison," Seto muttered, echoing the words from Siegfried's speech in the ball-room. He snorted. "Yeah, right."

Though he was tired, he made himself get to his feet. Ahead of him the neat green lawn sloped down, and on the flat ground at the hill's base Seto recognised a laden trestle table and a few coloured specks dotted around the grass: the buffet table and croquet lawn, both abandoned now. Glancing to the left he saw what must be another entrance to the rose garden he had briefly passed through; trellises were set up like fences, and the same blood-painted roses had been trained over them. An opening in the wall of foliage led into a shadowed walkway, and Seto could hear the faint sound of water. He paused only long enough to wrinkle his nose in distaste; he had had enough of this place's Halloween gore and cheap scares. The joke was getting old.

He guessed that his best bet was to head back into the castle; maybe from there he would be able to find an exit. With dragging steps, he began to descend the slop.

"You look tired, Kaiba."

Seto froze, suddenly feeling cold. He paused a moment, then turned quickly. "Siegfried."

The other man was sitting on the grass, his long legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankle. He was leaning back on one hand, the other in his hair as he watched Seto with an amused expression. "You look shocked to see me."

"What do you expect?" Seto replied. "I did put a bullet in your head, after all. People don't usually come back from that… I guess you're just too damn stubborn to know when to quit."

"I told you that you would remain here forever," Siegfried said, unconcerned. "And I meant it. This is not the 'real' world, Herr Kaiba; this place is especially for you." He patted the grass beside him. "Here, come and sit with me."

Seto raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"Don't make a fuss, Kaiba, just do as you are told."

"I'd rather stand. Thanks," Seto said slowly.

Siegfried studied him for a moment, a small smile on his face, before shrugging. "Suit yourself." He stretched, arching his back like a cat and yawning lazily. "You know, I really don't know how you made it this far." Seto's hands itched; the man should be dead, and here he was, with the nerve to just sit there and chat as though nothing was wrong. "How about we play a game?" Siegfried's tone was bright, his expression blithe. Seto stared at him for a moment with narrowed eyes.

"A game." Of course, a game. Wasn't that how everything was settled? Bakura's words echoed in his mind: "You have time only for games".

"Yes, just a little contest, a little chase," Siegfried was saying. He rose to his feet, unfolding his long limbs with a strange grace. "It seems only fair to give you a sporting chance. A tiny chance, but still a chance. After all," he said with a sweet smile, "it will be nice to watch you lose."

Seto only rolled his eyes. "Okay, so we duel, and if I win-"

"Ah, ah," Siegfried interrupted with a wave of one elegant finger. "Not a duel."

"No?" He should have known better. Nothing here happened how it should.

"A race, of sorts," Siegfried explained, clasping his hands together, long finders interlacing. "And no cheating this time."

Seto's face twisted into a snarl, and he moved forward, grabbing a handful of Siegfried's ridiculous frilly shirt. He drew him close, the movement violent, and growled, "Cheat? Last time I checked, you were the one who tried to win a duel by chopping my fucking head off."

Siegfried met his eyes, a look of panic only very briefly crossing his face. In an instant he had reverted to his superior smirk. "You can talk," he said softly. He raised one hand and with the tip of his index finger tapped the centre of his forehead. "Don't you think?"

"Look, Siegfried, this isn't funny anymore. I want out."

"You're going to shoot me again?" His smirk twitched into a smile. "Oh no, wait, that's right. You don't have your little pop-gun anymore, do you?" Seto growled, and shook Siegfried's fragile body. "Okay, okay," the other man said. "But if you want to get out, you have to play the game. You have to play by my rules."

Seto narrowed his eyes, then slowly let Siegfried go. "…Go on then," he muttered, folding his arms. "What are the rules?"

"The game is simple," Siegfried said, as though happy to finally have the opportunity to launch into his speech proper. "If you can reach the heart of the maze, you will find your exit." As he said this, he gestured expansively with one arm, indicating the stretch of green, the castle, the misty spires and roofs beyond the initial walls. Seto wondered if there was an actual maze, or if he meant the whole place." All you have to do is get there," Siegfried went on. "…In one piece."

Seto mulled this over for a second. "In one piece, huh? So how does that bullet factor into this?"

"Hmm?"

"I blew a hole in your skull, but you're still standing. That doesn't exactly leave me too scared for my own safety."

"Oh, Kaiba," Siegfried cooed, moving to Seto's side. "You forgot, didn't you? I have control in this place, and this is a place of illusion. I can make you believe whatever I want you to believe, and if I want you to believe that you are mortally wounded, well…"

Seto sneered. "Whatever."

"Anyway, I'd get a move on, if I were you."

"What's the hurry? It's not like either of us is going anywhere," Seto replied churlishly.

Siegfried shook his head. "No, I have all the time in the world. You, however… You are locked here, doomed to wander while your body rots. Feeling a little more scared now?"

Seto glared, fingers flexing. Something occurred to him. "And Pegasus?"

Siegfried shrugged. "Oh, he's the same. He found his own way in, but now that he's here he will share the same fate as you. Don't try to convince me you care, Kaiba. We both know that the only person you have ever cared about is yourself."

"Yeah, yeah," Seto sighed. "You people keep telling me that. I guess it must be true."

Siegfried only laughed. "Run along, Herr Kaiba. Run along, Alice. Next time we meet I won't be this charitable." With that he turned, moving toward the entrance to the rose garden. He paused under the arch, half turning, caressing one full, rounded bloom with the tips of his fingers. Throwing Seto a final look, he said, "Well, what are you waiting for?"

Before Seto could reply, however, Siegfried had stepped under the roses' shade, and was hidden from view by their glistening petals. Seto started forward, peering round the corner, but found the shady walkway empty. A warm breeze set the flowers gently swaying, but the man was gone.

* * *


	15. Fourteen: Will o' the Wisp

_I've been running around in circles  
Without any direction  
I've been lost here for so long  
I've forgotten who I am…  
_

The Crüxshadows - 'Waiting to Leave'

* * *

"Do you really think that's a good idea?" Leon said mildly, regarding the digitally generated, over-simplified maps displayed on the monitors with a thoughtful expression. "Giving him a way out, and everything?" 

"Don't worry," his elder brother replied. He didn't even look 'round, though he did smile, a slow, confident smile. "He will never make it out. Not alive, anyway."

Leon snorted. "That sounds like over-confidence." He turned to Siegfried, who was standing with his arms folded, eyes staring ahead as he watched a screen of code. "I thought you were making a point of avoiding that. Seems to me like offering him an exit is just the sort of thing someone would do if they were underestimating him." He turned back to the monitor bank. "It's a classic villain thing."

Siegfried was silent for a long moment, before smiling and bowing his head. "Did you know," he said, "that in the old version of _Cinderella_, the sisters cut pieces off their feet, so as to better fit into the slipper?"

Leon turned and stared at him, then swallowed. He frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?" he said.

"It means, baby brother," Siegfried said, lifting his head and fixing the boy with an enigmatic look. "That legends get sugar coated over the years. It means that a happy ending often has to mean bloodshed. It means that, in this fairytale of ours, nothing is as pleasant as it seems."

Leon regarded his brother for several seconds. "So that means… this way out?"

"Is not as simple as you, or he, may think."

* * *

Seto descended the grassy slope with long loping strides, passing the abandoned croquet lawn impatiently. He hated that he was retracing an old route, moving backwards instead of onward. The repetition and lack of progress only enhanced the feelings of stasis and imprisonment that he already felt; the castle and its grounds were claustrophobic to him now, despite their apparent vastness. Everywhere he turned it was the same; always something new and twisted, but all the same stuff, essentially. And now, to be treading the exact same path as before… He growled and kicked at a disturbed hillock of grass, sending a small chunk of turf flying, and muddying the heel of his boot. He knew that being childish would get him nowhere, but it was just so damn _frustrating_. 

Ahead lay the gate through which he and Pegasus had passed after the other man had conveniently shown up in time to prevent Seto being beheaded. It was which a grudging acceptance that Seto admitted that Pegasus had actually saved him, not only once but a number of times, in this strange 'wonderland'. He wondered just where the other man had disappeared to; he hadn't seen him since the ball-room. Not that he was worried about him, per se… he just wanted to know where he was. Isis had said it, and Mai and her little band of harpies had reiterated it: if he was going to beat Siegfried at his own game, he could use any advantage he could lay his hands on. Seto had never been one to require help from anyone else, and would refuse it whenever it was offered, but if he was going to be stuck in a VR world with Maximillion Pegasus, then the buffoon may as well make himself useful.

When Seto reached the gate he instinctively glanced up to the stone overhang, once again meeting the eyes of the gargoyle that watched over the only egress in that stretch of wall. He took a double take; was it his imagination, or was the vile creature grinning at him now? With a sneer he passed under its mocking gaze and into the shaded vestibule, then stopped abruptly. When he had come this way before, the gate ahead had been chained and padlocked, leading to himself and Pegasus passing through one of the side doors instead, and thus on through the picture gallery. Now both doors stood firmly barred with chains around their handles, and one was even secured with old boards nailed across it. The gate which had been locked, however, hung open, its chains hanging loose and trailing on the ground as the gate swung slowly in the warm breeze.

"Trapped like pets," Seto murmured, echoing Pegasus' earlier words. He was being guided; he felt less like a rat in a maze and more like a lamb being led to its inevitable end. Expression grim, Seto futilely tried both doors before facing the gate. "All right, then, Siegfried," he said. "I said I'd play it your way… this once." Without really thinking about it, he drew the Rod from his belt and held it loosely in his right hand; it was strange how quickly the artefact had become a familiar and welcome presence upon his person, as though he should always have had it. He let his arms swing gently as he descended the yellow stone steps beyond the gate, his gait becoming easier the further down the long staircase he went. Maybe it was something about being outside of the castle's walls, even if only for a little while; he knew that escaping the VR wouldn't be as easy as simply walking out the front gate, but even so it was a refreshing change not to see sandstone walls wherever he turned, blocking his path.

After one flight, the steps levelled out into a small landing before changing angle and continuing to descend, seeming to disappear into the shadows of the thick forest. Seto eyed the tangled trees with trepidation before continuing; the foliage looked too thick to cut through, so the staircase was the only route available. He just couldn't ignore the feeling of walking straight into a trap.

The air became cooler the further under the trees he walked, descending into a shaded wilderness of a forest, and the eerie silence began to be disturbed by the gentle creaking of crickets, the thump of small wings, and the odd chirping call of a bird. If Seto was honest about it, it was almost… kind of… peaceful.

It took five more zigzagging flights until he reached the ground, where the stone abruptly blended into a broad, flat path of compacted pebbles. Grass and strangely twisted flowers grew up from between the small stones, though Seto noticed that their stems and leaves were a sickly yellow colour, their shapes bent and crooked due to lack of light. The canopy of leaves, branches, and needles above blocked the artificially yellow sun, causing the forest path to take on a twilit dimness, so much so that it felt like evening had dawned in the time it had taken Seto to descend the steps.

Suddenly, the chirp of a bird was cut short with a startling avian scream, and then a distorted growl echoed across the shadowed forest, making Seto pause in his tracks. Eyes wide, he remained still for several seconds, trying to gauge the direction from which the monstrous sound had come. When nothing further happened, he relaxed, though he made a deliberate mental note to stay alert, now that he knew these woods contained more than sparrows and rabbits.

He walked on for another ten minutes, Rod in hand; his stomach growled every now and then, reminding him of how long he had been wandering in Siegfried's little playground. As he progressed, the trail became narrower and darker, and the limbs of the flanking trees stretched further into his path. Eventually he came to a break in the dense foliage: a broad stretch of long grass, most of it drooping and yellow-brown. Through its centre ran a set of rail tracks, half covered over with grass and debris. Curious, Seto glanced left and right; the tracks extended out of sight in both directions, curving with the line of the forest until they were lost from view behind trees and ferns. He frowned, wondering whether he should follow the tracks in either direction. Straight ahead the forest trail continued, though almost hidden in ivy by the side of the path stood a small wooden sign.

Intrigued, Seto crossed the open space with long strides, carefully stepping over the rails and moving close to the sign, crouching to brush the leaves out of the way. Written in flaking paint in a curling, spidery hand, were the words, "The Forest of Memory".

"…the hell?" Seto murmured, letting the ivy leaves fall back into place, once again concealing the worn text. "Is this the next part of your 'maze', then?" Making up his mind, Seto rose to his feet and passed the sign, entering the second stage of forest. As soon as he entered the trees' shade it became apparent that this was not the same forest as the one he had left behind; it was darker, and the trail seemed to blur before his eyes as he walked, his steps uncharacteristically sluggish. There was a high, quiet hissing in his ears, and before long he began to feel dizzy.

He brought one hand to his forehead to try and suppress the ache, leaning with his other against the gnarled trunk of a tree. It felt as though something was tugging at the base of his skull, while simultaneously the familiar tight pain that signalled the onset of a migraine swept from his temple to behind his eye.

Gritting his teeth, he continued. The painful sensation dulled after a while, settling until it became only a blunt ache, though his vision still swam and blurred if he made sudden movements. He found that if he tried to think of anything more than placing one foot in front of the other his brain threw up a wall of white fuzz and pain, and so he concentrated on walking, and hoped that the mental cloud would lift when he finally exited the wood.

"Halt!" The word shot out of the hissing silence like a whip, and Seto winced at the volume.

"Who goes there?" came a second voice. Seto paused, his grip on the Rod tightening. There was a rustling sound, then two figures stepped out from the tangling bramble thicket, each of them holding long, slender spears, the ends of which were adorned with small dangling lanterns. Seto glared at one, then the other, then began to laugh.

"You two?" he said. "Seriously… you two?"

The smaller and slimmer of the two guards placed a hand on his bony hip and settled a level, green-eyed gaze at Seto. "Us two," he said.

His companion, Mutou's number three cheerleader, flashed an idiotic grin and leaned on his staff. "Sorry, man, but we can't let you get past us."

"Am I supposed to be afraid of you dweebs?" Seto asked. Try as he might, he just couldn't bring himself to feel even remotely threatened by this pair of - in his opinion - half-wits.

Tristan only smiled and shrugged. "I dunno," he said. Like Malik and Bakura before him, he was not dressed in his usual attire, but rather an odd, skewed version of it. His coat was long and black, with the collar turned up. The shirt beneath was black also, his trousers a fine black and white pinstripe. Beside him stood his fellow guard, wearing his usual leather trousers, though with the addition of a short black jacket with an upturned collar similar to Tristan's. His waistcoat and headband, while usually red, were now black and white diamond check, and the tattoo beneath his eye was adorned with spidery curlicues and spikes, giving the overall impression that his eye was suspended in the centre of a black web.

"How are you feeling, Kaiba?" Duke said. Seto frowned at the change of subject, though his head gave a twinge, an echo of the ache he had suffered earlier. The dull pain was still there, but this little stab made him wince. "You don't look so good. What do you think?" he went on, turning to his companion.

"He really doesn't look so good," Tristan agreed, scratching the back of his head.

"Maybe you should lie down," Duke suggested, cocking his head so that black curls fell over his face, partially obscuring the tattooed eye.

"Yeah, right," Seto said. "This is all routine by now."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Duke said. "What's routine?" He moved forward, and set one slim hand on Seto's shoulder. Seto moved to shrug him off, but the smaller man's hold was surprisingly firm. "You've only just got here, remember?" On the last word, Seto's vision seemed to lurch, and he grit his teeth, fighting the rising thick ache in his head.

"Yeah," Tristan chimed in, moving forward also. Seto took an instinctive step back; he would not let himself get cornered and trapped again. Again… when had it happened before? When was the last time…? He recalled something bright, the warm smell of honeysuckle and the white flash of a daisy. Something about a church, and the glow of green light. "What're you talking about, man?"

"Look, just… back off, okay?" Seto warned, raising the Rod in a defensive gesture even as the movement made his head swim. The pain was getting worse now, and lights sparkled like fairies in the darkness when he blinked.

"Hey, watch it," the black haired guard said, raising his hands defensively, even though in one he still held his spear. "We're here to help you. We're your friends, remember?"

"Don't you remember?"

"Try to remember."

"I don't…" Seto found himself stammering; the guards' faces blurred before him, moving strangely in the dappled light. He recognised their faces, didn't associate them with threat despite their weapons, and yet… and yet… "Who… are you?"

They looked at each other, and Seto missed the small, gleeful smiles on their faces.

* * *

The kitchen floor was slick with red, slowly pooling out, forming a thin web-work as it filled the cracks and spaces between the tiles first, then welled higher and spreading over the tiles' smooth surfaces themselves. There was blood in his hair, blood in his mouth, over his clothes. He coughed, gagging on the warm copper taste in the back of his throat. He was dimly aware of their voices, somewhere above him now, and as the latest wave of dizziness subsided he managed to make out some of their words. 

"I don't know," said one of them. "I think he looked better without it."

"You're not gouging it out again," said the second. His voice was deeper. Bakura. "You were clumsy enough putting the thing in."

Pegasus opened his eye, having to blink several times just to free his vision of the clogging red sting. His whole body hurt, though he knew that most of it was simply from small flesh wounds. They had only been playing with him, after all. After a moment his vision cleared, though still with a reddish haze overlaying everything. They were standing only a couple of feet away, the soles of their shoes forming little islands in the shallow sea of his blood; he sat hunched against a black stove, his head lowered, one leg curled, one extended, his arms hanging limp, the backs of his hands resting on the tiles. Amid the glistening crimson, something gleamed in the hollow light.

He kept very still for a moment; they were still talking. He didn't have time to stay and wallow in pain, not when his escape route was lying so carelessly discarded in front of him. He moved faster than he thought he could, temporarily forgetting the myriad cuts that adorned his skin and holding only one thought in mind, that of escape. The knife's handle was slick in his hand, but he closed his fingers around the gnarled bone with grim tightness, slipping on the wet tile as he rose to his feet.

"What-? Shit!" Malik hissed, darting back as Pegasus slashed blindly.

"You idiot," Bakura snarled. He lunged forward, but by some wild stroke of luck Pegasus had raised the knife in time, and in such a way as to catch the fiend's stomach with its crooked point, and Bakura had taken another step before he realised; the blade made a terrible liquid squelch as it slid into him. His eyes were wide in blank disbelief, and he choked, a thin trickle of blood issuing from his mouth.

"Bakura!" Malik shrieked, but Pegasus was already drawing back, pulling the knife from the spirit's body, and turning to flee. He heard Bakura fall to his knees, his breathing loud and ragged, and Malik gave a shout and rushed to his side; neither of them were chasing him. Yet.

He ran with a speed he hadn't known he possessed, using the worktops and ranges to propel himself forward, blindly forward, throwing himself through the nearest exit before he even knew he had reached it. Slamming the heavy door behind him, he paused for a second, panting, the bloody knife still clutched in his hand, his knuckles turned white with the intensity of his grip. He leaned with his back against the door, pressing his full weight against it and dreading the moment he might feel a push from the other side. He felt sick; if he tried, he could block out most of the pain from the smaller scratches and designs cut into his skin, but now that the adrenalin levels in his blood were decreasing he could no longer ignore the unbelievable, swelling (yet dreadfully familiar) pain in the left side of his head. Gingerly he brought one hand up, not daring to touch the skin of his face. He hadn't been aware of it the time, but he knew exactly what they had done. Biting back a dry sob he shook his head, refusing to acknowledge it for the time being. He had to find Kaiba.

After stumbling through one broad stone corridor after another, he paused to breathe, leaning against the wall and leaving a smear of red on the stone.

"Oh my… Oh my dear…!"

He looked up; on the wall opposite was a small, grimy frame which, while it had contained nothing but brown murk moments before (so much so that he hadn't even noticed its presence) , was now occupied by the woman he still couldn't get quite used to seeing. Still, at that moment he couldn't have been more relieved to see anyone else.

"Cecilia," he said, his voice sounding weak.

"What happened, love?" she said. Her brow was creased in a worried frown, and she was leaning forward out of her frame, studying him, and his wounds, with a look of panic on her face. "What happened to you?"

Normally he would have explained in length, appreciated the sympathy, but now…

He hadn't the energy.

"It's nothing," he said faintly. "They're just flesh wounds." He knew he must look pretty dreadful to cause the look of panic he saw on her face; a quick glance down at himself confirmed this. He was missing his jacket, and his shirt hung half open, ripped here and there, soaked through with red. Beneath, his skin played canvas to an intricate maze of lines and curls, all carved shallowly by knife-point and nails. He was careful to let his hair fall over his left eye, concealing the greatest part of Malik and Bakura's handiwork. "Kaiba."

"Hmm?"

"I need you to help me again," he said, his voice getting stronger as he spoke. She nodded silently, and he shuffled across the corridor until he could rest one hand against the bottom of her frame. "Kaiba. Do you… know where he is?"

"Rushing off to his rescue again, even with you in such a state?" she fussed.

"Cecilia, please."

"All right," she sighed. She shook her head. "You silly. You know I'd do anything for you." Pegasus felt a twisting wrench at his heart, but he overcame it, reminding himself that she was but an illusion. "I last saw your pretty friend heading toward the North Gate; do you remember the Picture Gallery? There's a gate just outside."

"I remember," Pegasus said after a moment's thought. "It was locked."

"Not anymore," Cecilia said with a shrug. "He headed that way, toward the forest. I'll show you how to get there. Follow me, if you're strong enough."

* * *

"So what happens next?" 

Siegfried tapped a couple of keys, then looked up. "I'm sorry?"

"What happens next?" Leon repeated. He was seated on a sleek swivel chair in the room's corner, leaning back with his heels resting on the edge of a bank of computers, legs crossed at the ankle. He had been watching Seto wander within the program with only detached interest, but this new turn of events left him curious.

Siegfried smiled again, another of his slow, sly smiles that made Leon believe he was keeping something hidden, some trick up his lace-trimmed sleeve, some final face-down trap that would swing the game for him. "Nothing," he said.

Leon blinked, sitting up and removing his feet from the terminal. They didn't quite reach the floor, and he swung them childishly as he asked, "Nothing?"

"That is right, Leon," Siegfried replied. "Now all we have to do it watch. Although, in the case of the unfortunate Herr Pegasus, that may be in rather poor taste." Leon thought he saw just the tiniest twinge of regret on his brother's face, but it was gone as swiftly as it had appeared. "Regardless," he went on, "my plan has already worked. All that remains is to let things follow their natural course."

"I still don't really get it," Leon said. "He's still in there, he's still alive, and still walking."

"Ah yes," Siegfried said with that same smile, holding up one slender finger. "But in a matter of moments, he will not even remember where it was that he was walking to. I told him I could make him believe anything I want him to believe… and now I am going to prove it."

Something moved on another screen behind him, and Leon narrowed his eyes, focusing on the gruesome scene in the kitchen; neither of them had been watching Pegasus, so preoccupied had Siegfried seemed with observing Kaiba. "Brother," he started, and Siegfried turned sharply.

"What?"

Leon pointed. The kitchen now contained two, not three, occupants, one of whom was curled on the floor clutching a spreading red stain on his abdomen. Pegasus was gone.

"I'm guessing that wasn't part of your plan."

* * *


	16. Fifteen: Reunion

"You should take a break," Leon said, eyeing his elder brother with a careful gaze. Siegfried was bent over one of the computer terminals, his hands gripping the edge of the bank, shoulders taught, eyes narrowed and with his teeth bared in a grimace of frustration. "I mean, he's not going to go far, is he?" He glanced at the screen Siegfried was scrutinising; but it showed only an endless stream of code. "They can't escape, can they? Either of them."

Siegfried took a long, slow breath, then conceded, "No. No, neither of them would be able to get out. And besides," he added, half turning to his brother with a smug sort of smile, "I already have Herr Kaiba in my grasp."

Leon raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Yes," Siegfried said. He pointed to a screen which showed a blurry, pixellated representation of what was happening in the VR world; Leon moved closer and narrowed his eyes to focus. He made out a brown haired figure curled at the feet of two others who held spears. "He is not going anywhere."

Leon nodded, and his brother failed to notice the thin line his mouth made, the grim set of his jaw. "You should take a break," Leon said again. "I'll keep watch over them for now."

* * *

"That way?"

Cecilia nodded, her graceful fingers twisting together as she watched Pegasus lean against the wall next to her picture. "Are you sure you can make it?"

"I have to," Pegasus said, meeting her eyes, "don't I?"

And so he left his guide, who could go no further, and moved into the static air, toward the tall gate over which the gargoyles stood watch. Cecilia watched him go, her arms clasped about herself as though shielding herself from the cold, a deep frown rumpling her painted-canvas brow. "Be careful," she said softly, watching her husband go. His steps were uneasy, unsteady, and his head was bowed with the weight of his wounds, but he was resolved. She watched him go, until he disappeared from view, stumbling toward the staircase and down, down into the dark forest.

"So now what do we do with him?" Tristan asked, leaning on his spear and looking down at the dazed Seto. "We've done what we agreed to do, right? He believes he's no one."

Duke cocked his head to the side for a moment, before flinching as a small hand touched his elbow.

"Don't be scared," Leon said, his voice soft and calm. The black haired boy looked down at him, regaining his composure once he saw who it was.

"Mr. von Schröder," he said. He bowed his head and stood aside as the boy stepped forward. Leon's eyes were on Seto.

"Thank you, both of you," he said absently. "Leave us now."

"What?"

"But sir," Duke protested. "We have orders from your brother. We-"

"I'm aware of what my brother has instructed, and I'm asking only for a few minutes with him. You're in no position to argue with me, either of you."

Wordlessly, both Duke and Tristan stood down, nodding deferentially and backing away. Seto watched as they seemed to blend into the dappled shadow of the surrounding thicket. His attention shifting then to Leon, he tried to rise to his feet. The boy held out a hand to indicate he shouldn't, and moved forward, a curious expression on his face.

"Mr. Kai-" He stopped himself, sighed. Took a deep breath, a decisive breath. "Mr. Kaiba."

"...You know me?" Kaiba said. His voice sounded like someone else's.

"Yes," Leon replied simply, nodding. Slowly he knelt beside Seto, who frowned. "I'm sorry, you know. You look fairly pitiful like this, and, well... You're the only one who's ever been worthy of being the long-time rival of the great Yugi Mutou."

If names could ring bells, Seto's head contained a cathedral's full complement. "Of who?" he said.

Leon shook his head. "Exactly. You see... I would do something to help, but, my brother... I can't go against him. You understand. I know you do, even though you don't remember. It's a matter of loyalty." He paused. "That doesn't mean I don't think you deserve a fair chance. He set out this game for you, he explained the rules, but now... This can't be in keeping with them, with his own rules. It's not _fair_."

He stood up then, placing his hands on his slim little hips and pacing, dead leaves crunching under his feet. "I think... I want to help you out. I haven't decided how yet, but I wanted to tell you. I just thought you should know - you're not alone."

"I wasn't anyway," Seto said, though in the tone of one who was not quite aware of what he said. Leon frowned, and Seto himself puzzled over what he had just said. Who was he referring to? How had he known...?

"They're coming back," Leon said then, upon hearing the crack of a twig and the rustle of leaves. Sure enough, an instant later Duke and Tristan had appeared out of the murk once again, spear lanterns swaying and casting an uneven, ghostly glow over the small clearing.

"You said a few minutes," Duke said. "It's been that now."

"Sorry, kid," Tristan said, then received a harsh look and a swift kick to the shin for his casual address of the second von Schröder brother. "I mean, uh... We have to do what we're told, you know?"

Leon merely nodded, not minding - or appearing to mind - Tristan's slip. "I understand," he said. He looked at Seto, meeting his unfocused gaze. "Remember what I said. We will come across one another again." He hesitated a moment more, before offering a terse smile and turning, small hands locked together behind his back, to walk away, letting the wood's darkness swallow him up.

There were several moments' awkward silence in the little glade, before Tristan broke the calm by saying, "What was that about?"

Seto shrugged, gaze blank. He was no one. He didn't know. "I don't know."

"Bullshit," Tristan said, and Duke silenced him with a hand on his chest, preventing him from moving forward. Tristan glared first at Seto, then at his own partner. "Come on, you heard -"

"I didn't hear anything," Duke said. "We do what we're told, right _Honda_? If Master von Schröder didn't want us to hear anything, then we didn't. You shouldn't even have been listening."

"I wasn't... I mean... Don't call me that."

"That's your name, remember?" Duke said, casting an obvious sidelong look in Seto's direction. "We are who we say we are."

Tristan - or was it Honda? - grit his teeth, glaring daggers (glaring _spears_) at his partner. Suddenly, the black haired boy turned, his hand on Tristan's chest gone slack, his crystalline green eyes searching the thick foliage that lined the grove. His slender brows furrowed, and Seto noticed - how did he notice something like that, even with this haze? - he had stopped breathing.

"What is it?" Seto said, blinking a few times to try and clear his vision of the dancing stars that remained even when he closed his eyes. He tried to focus on the two figures standing over him; something was clearly very wrong.

"Shut up!" the boy who called himself Otogi hissed, holding up one slender hand. His partner watched him, frowning, and whispered, "What?"

"I said quiet," "Otogi" snapped, keeping his voice low. Bewildered, Seto cast his eyes around the shadowed glade to see what had the other so worried, but he couldn't see anything. The three of them remained motionless and silent for several seconds, until Seto heard a distinct rustling, snuffling sound, followed by the snap of a twig. The two guards looked at one another, and then down at Seto. He got the impression that they were weighing up whether or not it would be worth letting him into the loop. After a renewed rustling, accompanied by the definite and ominous sound of approaching footfalls - heavy, dragging: not Leon - it seemed they decided that it wasn't.

"Let's get out of here," the black haired boy said quietly, and his partner nodded, tightening his grip on his spear-cum-lantern.

"Where are you..." Seto began, even as the pair of them slipped into the thick shadows beneath the twisting trees, disappearing in a hushed rustle of plants through the prickly, thorn-studded brambles and mean, poisonous bracken. "Going?" he finished, the word hanging redundantly in the ominous dark. The footfalls drew closer.

Slowly Seto rose to his feet, using a tree's gnarled bark for purchase as his eyes swam and his head lurched. The forest was cold, and it bit through to his bones. Or was that fear? Whatever was approaching, the two who would have caught him and kept him prisoner - he didn't want to think what else they might've done to him - had abandoned him and fled. And they were armed.

A crunching sound as leaves were crushed, and Seto whirled, whole body tensed with some physical memory, and he wondered if it would do him any good. His long fingers curled into fists, and he watched the branches, black on darker black, with a cold expectancy. The leaves shook, stems parted, and into the clearing stumbled a mess of blood, rags, and tangled white hair.

Seto moved back on instinct, but when the stranger collapsed to his knees in apparent exhaustion, hugging himself and panting for breath, Seto figured he could relax. When the newcomer looked up, Seto recoiled once more. The left side of his face was coated in slick black - blood, Seto realised, made dark in the forest's gloom - and his long hair hung stringy and knotted over it, similarly painted with the stuff. Where his eye should have been was a mess of bruising and fresh, ragged cuts, as though someone had begun with a straight line and become bored somewhere along the way; beneath the swelling, he caught the glint of metal, only just visible beneath the gore that masked it.

"Kaiba... boy!" the poor wretch gasped, and his mutilated face broke into an improbable grin.

"Who are you?" Seto said, and hated the banality of so predictable a question. He sank to a crouch opposite the other man. Like the guards, this person seemed familiar to him, more so, in fact, and Seto tried to grasp that infuriating scrap of recognition before it slipped away into the furthest recesses of his mind. Unsuccessful, he silently cursed his addled head and the forest's light and scent that made him think in futile circles. "What happened to your eye?"

The man looked up at him with his good eye, which was large and a deep liquid hazel, made darker by the shadows. Seto tried to remember looking into it before, into two the same, but once again drew a blank.

The other man frowned for a moment, and brought his hand to his face as though he had failed to notice the blood and the pain, and then he shuddered, clenching his fingers before they reached his skin.

"No time for that," he said, in a voice so quiet that Seto had to lean forward just to make out the words. "There's something... We have to move. Now."

With that he lurched to his feet and grabbed Seto's wrist, meaning to pull him away but succeeding only in crumpling against Seto's chest. None too pleased at having a blood-soaked stranger fall on him, Seto nonetheless managed to grasp the taller man by the shoulders and steady him before they both fell.

"Seems I lost more than I thought," the man mumbled.

"You know me?" Seto said.

"Not for long," came the soft reply. Seto noticed that the other's red-smeared fingers were clutching at the lapel of his coat. "This forest... does something..."

"To memories?" Seto finished for him. He had been able to guess that much.

"Yes, but that's not the worst of it," the older man said, resting his forehead against Seto's chest while he recovered his breath. "There's something following me. Some kind of... creature."

Seto stilled, and his gaze involuntarily flew to the deep shadows from whence this wanderer had emerged. He listened for anything that might be a threat, any sound at all above the creaks and breaths of the forest.

"Let's go," he said, pulling the other man upright and letting him lean on him, one arm over his shoulders. "How far behind you?"

"Not sure. Could be-" He was interrupted by a low growl, still far enough away to give them time to move, but close enough to send a chill through Seto's spine and to make his gut twist. "Closer than I thought?"

"We move. Now," Seto said, and began to pick his way down the narrow path, trying his best to follow the route the two guards must have taken. He had to practically drag his new burden after him, but to give the guy some credit, he was doing remarkably well for someone who appeared to have had most of his blood scratched out of him,all for the sake of drawing pretty red patterns on his skin. Indeed, as they progressed Seto found himself glancing down every so often, his eyes drawn to where the other man's ragged shirt hung open, revealing flesh carved with a maze of arcane curves and webs. Curves are harder to cut, he thought absently, and then wished he hadn't. It would have taken a slow and steady hand to cut arcs that smooth.

Branches like claws scraped at his face and hands as they wended their way through the shadowy wood, and every half minute or so there came a new sound - a rush of feet (or claws), a pained yelp or cruel snarl, or simply the whisper of shaken leaves on a disturbed plant - which caused one or the other of them to freeze. On top of all of this, his head was still a muggy cloud of pain, woolly and empty at the same time. Fortunately, he now had more important things to focus on, if he could manage to focus at all, and he devoted all his mental strength and physical energy to placing one foot in front of the other, and to keeping a firm hold on his new charge, dragging him through the spiky thickets after him.

When at last their path led them out from under the forest's oppressive murk and they once again saw the (virtual) sky above them, they stumbled to the ground - one pulling the other - and landed in a tangle amid the long, grey grass. The light was startling after so long in the dark, and Seto had to shield his eyes as he peered back the way they had come, watching the shadowed opening for any sign of pursuit. Beside and beneath him, Pegasus breathed a sigh of (premature?) relief and let his head fall to the ground, his eye falling shut.

"Hey," Seto said, glancing down and giving the other man's shoulder a shake. "Don't relax just yet."

He was surprised at how clear his head felt; gone was the omnipresent ache, the tension between the temples and the ghostly haze in his vision. To his relief, he also felt his memory, his sense of self, gradually returning. He studied Pegasus' face.

"I know you," he said, surer than before.

Pegasus smiled weakly and pushed himself into a sitting position, using Seto's sleeve for purchase as he swayed slightly. "I'd say," he chuckled, then coughed.

"Pegasus," Seto said, voice coloured with a tint of triumph at having remembered the man's name. He chanced to look down then; the front of his white coat was stained with smears of light red. "Shit," he hissed. "What happened to you?"

Pegasus was silent for a long moment, eye flicking away, and then he grimaced, as though only now remembering the pain he must be in. He bowed his head, letting his hair fall over the left side of his face. "Just a scratch," he murmured absently. "Just... again..."

"Who did this?" Seto said, moving closer to him on instinct. The scent of blood on him made Kaiba light-headed. "Pegasus?"

"Ah... not again," Pegasus was mumbling; he had raised his hands to his face, even though the flow of blood appeared to have stilled some time ago. "Not again..."

Seto sighed. "Show me," he said. When Pegasus showed no sign of obeying, or even that he had heard, Seto brought his hands slowly to Pegasus', taking his fingers in his own and guiding his hands down. Pegasus silently complied, though kept his head lowered. Wordlessly, Seto pushed Pegasus's hair away, hooking it behind his ear. Where his hand touched Pegasus' face it came away wet.

He didn't say anything. It looked worse in the daylight, where he could see every detail. Blood covered the older man's cheek, running in broad rivulets from between the tightly shut lids of his twisted left eye; old scar tissue was painted over anew with fresh blood, old wounds reopened, new ones torn. Beneath the mess of ripped tissue, Seto could clearly discern the shape of a something beneath the skin, unlike the empty hollow that had been clear before, even while covered by a cloth patch. Even without that metallic glint before, he knew exactly what that something was. He chewed his lower lip and frowned deeply, waiting for Pegasus to speak. When he didn't, Seto repeated, "What happened?"

"It's... They..." Pegasus took a moment, swallowed, and caught his breath. Looking up, he said, "He gave it back."

Seto was silent for a long time then. He sat back on his heels, and let out a long breath. "He...?"

"The thief," Pegasus replied. His left eye remained shut, just a swollen red mess, though the look in his right was not plaintive, but vengeful. "That fiend, the _mad hatter_ of this place."

"What?"

"Bakura, I think his name is. We were never really fully acquainted..." He trailed off, looked down, and began to laugh. It was a dry, humourless sound, more like a deep retching in his chest. "He's mad."

"This whole place is mad," Seto said with a disdainful snort. To his surprise, Pegasus suddenly turned to him again and grabbed his arm.

"This whole place _is_ mad. That's what I was trying to tell you," he hissed, "before, at the ball, before he took you... before _this_..."

"I know," Seto said softly. His expression was grim.

Pegasus let his head droop once more; he had found Seto, and now that he no longer had that driving sense of purpose, he felt so unbelievably exhausted.

"Hey!" Seto said, tone sharp, and gripped Pegasus' shoulders so hard it hurt. "What the hell are you doing? You're giving up? Now?"

"N-no," Pegasus said, shaken to attention. He ached all over, and his eye, oh gods his eye...

"For God's sake, Pegasus, it's not even real," Seto growled. "I know you feel like you've lost a lot of blood, and I know it hurts, but - listen to me! - you have to remember where we are. It's a dream, remember? It's virtual, it's just an illusion."

"Just an... illusion..." Pegasus breathed deeply, and then eventually met Kaiba's intent stare.

"You said so yourself," Seto said, finding it difficult to stay patient.

"So," Pegasus said, touching the skin beneath his left eye with his fingertips, and flinching at the contact. "What about this?"

Seto pursed his lips. "The Eye," he said, though he didn't need to. He didn't need confirmation. "Well... I don't know yet, but..." he pulled the Rod from its place at his belt, and held it out so Pegasus could see. "I have this too."

Pegasus hesitated only a moment before reaching out his (clean, now) hand, gingerly running his fingertips over the smooth metal of the relic's shaft.

"Maybe he wants us to have them," he said.

Seto considered this, then frowned. "Maybe," he said. "But then again, not everything here obeys him in the way he'd probably want it to." When Pegasus gave him a questioning look, he said, "Your wife, for one thing. There've been others... I ran into Isis Ishtar a while back, you know. She... seemed to be on my side. If anyone here is on my side, I guess."

Wait, what had he said, just minutes ago?

"I am," Pegasus said. He looked up at Seto and gave a conciliatory smile. "On your side, I mean."

Seto hesitated, only half a beat, before replying, "And what good are you to me?" His tone was not nearly as harsh as he had intended. Something about this weak, blood-stained wretch offering a smile and saying that, despite what he'd been through, all for _his_ sake... Seto frowned and quickly said, "You're a wreck."

"Hmm, I know," Pegasus sighed, though still with a vague smile on his face. "So what do we do now?"

Seto drew a breath to reply, but froze as a low, quiet growl rumbled over the static air, coming from the underbrush behind them. He turned slowly, taking care to remember to surreptitiously click the Rod's blade out as he moved.

"It's too close," Pegasus whispered, gaze fixed on some point amid the shadowy foliage. "I can see it... it can see us. We can't get away, we..."

"Shh," Seto hushed him with a small movement of his free hand. "Just do exactly what I say."

* * *

"Oh," Siegfried snickered, smiling. "It's an old trick." He reclined in his seat, letting his eyes fall shut in relief and contentment, finally letting himself relax. "An old story. One even you should know. The monster in the forest, the creature in the dark." His smile became wide and sly. "...The wolf."


	17. Sixteen: The Wolf

_Beware the Jub-Jub Bird, and shun_

_The frumious Bandersnatch. _

_-- Lewis Caroll - 'Jabberwocky'_

* * *

"It's too close," Pegasus whispered, gaze fixed on some point amid the shadowy foliage. "I can see it... it can see us. We can't get away, we..." 

"Shh," Seto hushed him with a small movement of his free hand. "Just do exactly what I say."

He very slowly rose to his feet, holding the extended Rod with one fist. His eyes were fixed on some indeterminate point beyond the initial ferns and brambles that marked the edge of the Forest of Memory. Pegasus remained in his curled position in the long grass. He had drawn his arms around himself, and he kept flicking his good eye from Seto to the wood.

"Just stay still," Seto whispered.

"It's not there."

Seto turned. "What?"

"You're looking in the wrong place," Pegasus hissed.

"Well, I can't exactly see it-"

"Shh!" Pegasus held up a hand to silence him just as another gut-twisting growl rumbled out of the foliage. The very ground seemed to vibrate, and Seto and Pegasus could feel the reverberations in their ribcages. Seto took a step back, closer to Pegasus, who grabbed Kaiba's wrist with both hands and used it as purchase, lurching unsteadily to his feet. His head swam as he did so, and he closed his good eye for a moment.

Seto, aware that his companion was in a pretty sorry state, didn't bother to shake him off. He did have more pressing matters to deal with. A thicket of brambles crackled and swayed, and the shadows at the edge of the forest appeared to shift. Seto moved in front of Pegasus.

"Can i you /i see it?"

"It's... I can only see the eyes. It's... oh god."

"What?"

Kaiba saw it then. Emerging from the forest's stagnant shadows, two septic yellow eyes which reflected the light in filmy green discs. Following them, a wide, thin grin, and teeth - so many teeth. Seto felt something inside him quake, though he didn't let it show. His expression was set as the creature stepped into the open.

It was bigger than a wolf. It had to be almost bear sized, but the body was definitely canine; the shoulders were high, and around its broad neck flared a mane of dirty white fur. Its pointed ears were pressed back against its sleek head, and the skin of its long muzzle was wrinkled in a hungry snarl, its teeth bared. The teeth were... i inordinate /i . There was no other word for that mouth. No real wolf ever had a set like that, a set of yellowed razors and hooks, crooked and broken in places, coated with viscous red and old brown in others, sharp in all.

"Kaiba," Pegasus whispered; he was still holding Seto's wrist with one hand, and with the other he now clutched at the back of Seto's coat. "I think we should run."

Seto began to take another step back, but the wolf was watching him, and the second he moved it feigned forward, growling low in its blood-slick throat. Seto froze; he felt cold, and didn't realise that the blood had drained abruptly from his face.

"It's not going to let us leave," he breathed.

"Do you still have that gun?"

Seto gave a quiet, bitter laugh. "Afraid not."

The wolf creature began to pace, in slow, long strides, to Seto's left; its eyes never left Kaiba's face.

Seto swallowed. "Okay. I want you to run back the way you came - back through the wood until you get to the steps. Go back up to the gate. I'll catch up with you."

"What? Since when do you go in for stupid heroics?"

"I don't-" Seto made the mistake of raising his voice, and the wolf - now, why did it look so familiar? - finally lunged. Seto pushed Pegasus hard, so that he was flung away from him and out of the line of the monster's attack. At the same time, Seto brought the Rod's blade up and, dodging to the right at the last moment, swiped its point in a blind attempt to connect with flesh. He landed hard on the uneven ground and rolled. The blade had connected with something; he could hear the creature whining. He looked up. It was rounding on him again, this time with a thick stain of dark blood seeping over its fur. It was probably just a flesh wound, Seto thought grimly. Pegasus was wavering, still half on all fours.

"Go!" Seto ordered, and the wolf attacked. It snapped its jaws, threads of thick saliva dropping from the jagged teeth. He thought of his deck, snug in his coat's inside pocket, close against his chest and reassuringly heavy. He barely noticed the weight, usually. But why did he think of it now? Ah yes, he remembered. Remembered as the wolf leapt. He rolled out of the way again, only barely making it out of harm's way in time. He sprang to his feet, and noted with growing anger that Pegasus was still hovering at the entrance to the wood. He saw Pegasus' eye widen, a look of horror cross his face, and then he knew why. The monster had caught the tail of his coat, and the next instant it wrenched him back, flinging him to the ground.

"Kaiba!"

He swiftly reached inside his coat and drew out the first bundle of cards he could reach, and threw them to the side in Pegasus' rough direction. He didn't have time for anything more - the wolf was upon him. It crashed its great paw onto his chest, knocking the wind out of him and curling its long claws into him. He realised that the impact had knocked the Rod from his hand.

The wolf's jaws were inches from his face, and he fought desperately to keep its snapping face from his throat, using every ounce of strength he had. He had one hand braced under the creature's jaw, while the other was holding fast to a clump of fur on the side of its face. The smell of blood and old meat made him dizzy.

Suddenly, there was a flash of golden light. The wolf let out a brief, high yelp, and dark blood spattered thickly over Seto's face. He turned and rolled out from under the wolf as it cringed away; Seto seemed temporarily forgotten. He sprang to a crouch a couple of metres away, and grinned when he looked up. A tall figure encased in metallic black armour now stood between himself and the wolf; a pointed visor covered its face, and its long, curved sword was painted with the creature's blood. A little to the side, Pegasus knelt amid Kaiba's scattered deck, still holding up the now dully glowing card.

"Blade Knight," Kaiba said. "Good choice."

"Are you kidding?" Pegasus shot. "It was the first card I picked up." He turned back to the wolf, which was sizing up their knight. It was holding one forepaw above the ground, and it sported an impressive gash across its shoulders. "You recognised it too, then?"

Seto nodded. "Silver Fang. Finish it off, would you?"

"My pleasure." The white wolf was about to try one more attack on the stationary knight. "Blade Knight, destroy the enemy monster - destroy Silver Fang!"

The masked knight gave a quiet grunt of compliance and lunged forward. The wolf barely had time to issue another canine whimper before the knight's curved blade cut into flesh, keenly severing the creature's head from its body.

The wolf fell to the ground, slumping amidst the long grass, its blood spewing foully onto the pale green blades. The knight straightened, sword gleaming red, and then began to dissolve into luminous golden dust. Pegasus lowered the card.

There was a pause in which both men were silent. Then Seto said, "And I thought you'd lost your touch."

"Like riding a bicycle, Kaiba dear." He let out a heavy exhalation and slumped, half sitting, half kneeling. "That was too close."

"They're all too close," Seto replied, rising to his feet and strolling to Pegasus' side. He sank again to one knee, and held out his hand. Pegasus smiled wanly and handed him his card.

"Well, they're getting closer." Another pause, then Pegasus said, "How did you know it would work? Summoning, I mean."

Seto gave an awkward half shrug. "I summoned Vampire Lord to use against Siegfried's valkyrie bodyguard earlier, and before that, Bakura summoned... something. I don't know what it was. The point is, monsters seem a lot more real here than they ever did in the real world, holograms or no holograms."

"All in the mind, hmm?" Pegasus mulled this over for a moment, then said, "You weren't _really_ sure at all, were you?"

Seto shot him a look that wasn't quite as icy as he might have liked. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course I did." He stood up, and, after a moment's hesitation, offered Pegasus a hand. Pegasus took it, and allowed Kaiba to help him to his feet. There was an infuriating, knowing little smirk on his face, but just this once, Kaiba let it slide. Instead of calling him on it, he turned and went to retrieve the Sennen Rod and the rest of his cards. Who knew when he might need them again?

"I can't believe you don't carry a deck of your own," he said, as he tucked the Rod, its blade now retracted once again, into his belt. It was uncomfortable, pressed against the small of his back, but he found he felt oddly naked without it.

Pegasus shrugged. "I gave up that game a long time ago, you know." He wrapped his arms loosely around his body, hunching his shoulders a little as a cool breeze flew through the flat space in which they stood. Most of his cuts had scabbed over now, and the blood on his skin had dried and was beginning to flake off. Every now and then the pain in his head, in his eye, would flare up again.

His cards gathered, Seto turned to him. "Pegasus."

"Hmm?"

"...Thanks."

* * *

"What do you _mean_ they killed it?" 

"I mean they... well, they killed it. Dead."

"Oh no, no, no..." Siegfried sank into a creaking office chair and leaned his elbows on his knees, massaging his temples. His eyes were closed. "That was not how it was supposed to happen."

Leon leaned against a computer bank, his arms folded. "It's not going according to plan, is it?"

Siegfried didn't even bother looking up to glare at his brother. Instead, he merely shook his head.

"That's the thing about fairytales," Leon said. "The monsters tend to lose."

* * *

"You okay to walk?" 

"Goodness, Kaiba-boy," Pegasus said, waving his hand dismissively. "Anyone would think you were worried about me."

"I'm not worried." He stood at the wood's edge, half turned to Pegasus behind him. "I just don't want to have to carry you."

"Ooh, no need to get nasty," Pegasus said, but he was smiling. "Lead on, then, Kaiba-boy. I'll follow you."

Seto gave a brief nod before turning and stepping once more into the forest's murk, retracing his steps, towards the castle. Pegasus followed, keeping close. After a minute or so of walking, Seto said, "Seriously, though. You look pretty beaten up."

Unable to resist teasing the boy, Pegasus replied, "You _are_ worried after all." Then, when Kaiba offered only frosty silence by way of a reply: "I'm okay, Kaiba. What you said - before, about it being an illusion - it's not easy to remember. The pain's fading, though."

"...Good."

They continued in silence for a while. Seto led, and Pegasus kept close behind, both of them fighting through the foliage which infringed on the weedy path. Pegasus glanced down and laughed.

"What?"

"Yellow bricks," Pegasus said.

"...Oh, for god's sake."

Seto turned his back on his companion again and picked up the pace. However, after several more steps, he hesitated. Pegasus bumped into him, not expecting him to have stopped, and Seto absently held out his arm to both block and steady him.

"What is it?"

Seto didn't look at the other man, instead scanning the dark wood that surrounded them. "Shut up a minute," he said. He turned his head, hearing a faint sound like breathing. Pushing a frond-like branch out of his way, he stepped off the path and into the wood.

"Okay, then," Pegasus said. "I'll just wait here, shall I? ...Oh, who am I kidding?" Grudgingly, he followed after Seto.

It didn't take him long to catch up. After taking a few steps into the shady trees he found Seto standing by a thick, grey-barked tree, looking up into the forest's leafy canopy. It took him a moment to make out what Kaiba was looking at. Above them, crafted out of thick pine branches and strings of wine, was suspended a strange kind of bower. Inside it, both men could make out a figure; one slim, pale arm hung over the edge, the hand limp.

"Look," Seto said, and pointed to a series of thick, gnarled protrusions sticking out from the tree in whose branches the hammock was suspended; they formed a kind of organic ladder or set of steps, spiralling up the tree's trunk like the staircase of a tree-house. Pegasus looked sceptical as Kaiba tried pushing on one, testing its strength.

"You can't seriously be considering going up there," Pegasus said. Seto shrugged.

"Why not? It'll give us a decent view, and we need to figure out which way to go." With that, he set his foot on one of the lower rungs of the peculiar tree ladder, and steadied himself with his hand on another. "They seem strong enough." Pegasus shook his head as Kaiba began to climb. "You can stay there if you want."

Pegasus did just that, leaning against a slimmer tree with his arms folded, watching Seto ascend.

Kaiba began to question the wisdom of this particular plan when he was about half way up the tree. He wasn't afraid of heights, but the tree was taller than it had looked from the ground. That, combined with his last encounter with plants in this increasingly dangerous world, did lead to a certain uneasiness. He stayed close to the trunk, keeping one hand on its central column, and finding the rungs carefully with his feet.

As he neared the bower, which was not quite at the tree's top, but near enough, the "ladder" came to an end and he was able to step easily onto a broad, thick branch which seemed to double as a path. From there, he could see straight into the curious hammock-like effort; if he turned to the left, he could see the top of the castle's outer wall, and a stretch of roof - flat stone and slate tiled points and ridges. He turned back to the bower, and the girl who appeared to be asleep in it.

"Hey," he said. He was surprised to note that the girl was no one he knew. She had a frail, willowy body, china pale skin, and long hair an even paler shade of grey than Pegasus'. She stirred upon hearing his voice, and sleepily opened her eyes.

"...You?" she murmured, and sat up slowly. Her eyes were an arresting, electric shade of blue, and Seto almost lost his balance.

"You know me?"

Drowsily, she nodded. "I'm... Kisara. I need your help. Seto."

* * *

A/N: Right, quick note: Seto does not recognise Kisara because this story is set _before_ the Ancient Egypt arc (but after Doma); that said, Siegfried obviously doesn't know her either. The idea, in case you're uncertain, is that this is "a world of (Kaiba's) imagination", with elements designed by Siegfried weaving together with elements drawn directly from Seto's (and Pegasus') subconscious. I'm taking the liberty of assuming Seto has some residual memory of his former life, even though he does not consciously know it. And that is why she's there, but he doesn't know her :) 

Also, the wolf is a Bandersnatch (plural: Bandersnatchii). But you knew that. It is also a Silver Fang/Wolf (here I would link to the Wikia page for each card, but ff.n is retarded (it also won't let me use square brackets, which is even more retarded).

Also - I have uploaded a revised and re-edited version of this fic at my **new fiction journal** (link available in my profile); nothing too major (fixed spelling and continuity errors, etc). In addition, new chapters will be posted there up to several days before they are posted here, so if you want to read the chapters as soon as they come out, I'd recommend you watch that journal :)


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